


Geometry

by dandeliononfire



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-30 06:00:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14490372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandeliononfire/pseuds/dandeliononfire
Summary: Chapter 22 is up as of 4/4/19 - Go to Chapter 8 here on Ao3 or else link to: https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/myff where all my Everlark fics are at.Chapter 21 is up as of 2/15/19 - Go to Chapter 7 here on Ao3, or else link to:  https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/182838890858/geometry-chapter-21. Links to all previous chapters are included.Chapter 20 is up as of 1/17/19 -  Go to Chapter 6 on here, or else link to : https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/182106566573/geometry-chapter-20CHAPTER 18 & 19 UP as of 11/30/2018 (The chapter is in full text as "Chapter 5 and 6" here on Ao3, with a link to the previous chapters included.___This is a placeholder-link on Ao3 for where the story is hosted on Tumblr.  Links to most-current chapter always provided in chapter updates. And no, you don't have to have a Tumblr account to view.Peeta finds himself married to Katniss as the result of a bargain struck between his father and her dying mother.  The road forward is unclear, painful, but also Bittersweet.  Can Peeta solve the Geometry of how their lives are meant to fit together? Canon-divergent; neither Prim nor Peeta were reaped for the 74th Games.





	1. Chapter 1

For Those of You Looking for "Geometry".

We're through Chapter 18, updated on 11/30/18. Go to Chapter 5 and it'll be there in full text. \-----  
So here's the note I posted when I first took it down:

1\. No, it's not an abandoned WIP.

  
2\. No, I am not planning to flip it around into an original work and publish it.

  
3\. At this point I plan to post the final third of the story, but because of work and personal obligations, it doesn't look like I'll realistically get to it before the end of the Summer.

  
4\. Q: Why did I take it down?

           A: For professional reasons, I've taken all my fan fiction down from Ao3 at this point; it wasn't about deleting "Geometry."

  
5\. Feel free to leave messages for me in my inbox, but please don't send me hate mail.

  
6\. I am more active on Tumblr than anywhere else. If there are installment updates to "Geometry" over the next few months before I make the big all-in-one update on here (which at this point is my plan), they will show up there first. https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/

  
7\. Whoever is posting as"Dandeliononfire" on FF.net is *NOT* me. (However, their postings have nothing to do with my taking down my works here, so don't get mad at them; I haven't even read their work and the use of the name is probably coincidental.)  In fact, just FYI, if there's something posted anywhere by "dandeliononfire" except for this Ao3 account or the Tumblr account I've linked to above, it's not me. 

  
8\. Please don't take my having removed my works as any disrespect or lack of deep appreciation for the comments and support you've showed me in messages, kudos, and subscriptions: they've often been the things that kept me writing.

\-- Best,

          dandelion on fire


	2. Chapter 16

8/30/18 Chapter -- "Installment" 16 is up. No, you don't need a Tumblr account to follow the link and read; just copy ad paste the link below into the address bar.

https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/180192760938/geometry-chapter-16 

Links to previous chapters are in the header of the chapter, if you need to catch up.


	3. Chapter 17

Chapter 17 is up as a Thanksgiving Surprise

You can find it here:   https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/180372033413/geometry-17-happy-thanksgiving-surprise


	4. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Previous Chapter and current Chapter HERE: https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/myff

 ______________

Trigger Warnings: Without saying exactly when or how it’s coming, and to make it so I’m not giving away the plot, in this and/or upcoming chapters, for those who rely on trigger warnings, there is serious violence and the possibility of character death(s). If you have specific questions before you want to read on, then I invite you to message me for more information.

________________

_Thursday Morning, April 3rd_

_Study Hall_

I’m so tired.

But damn, the lack of sleep was worth it.

We stayed out late, or early, between packing up, and taking our time going back under the light of only the one flashlight. It was was almost time for me to normally be getting up, by the time we were back in our beds.

All morning— because I stayed home and had breakfast thanks to dad giving me the day off— Katniss has acted like nothing happened, like she said she would. I can’t be hurt by that, given our agreement. Last night was more than a huge step forward— it was a game changer— so I’m okay with things moving slowly.

I slump back in my chair; it’s hard work to keep the grin off my face.

The bell rings for the period to start, but Katniss doesn’t touch her books.

“What’re you thinking about?”  Hopefully, it’s about how much she enjoyed making out with me.

“It’s just…”  She squints as she looks off into space. “Do you think he has a learning problem?”

“Who?” Huh?

“The Finnegan kid.”

True, he’d been Mr. Grumps that morning in the hall, refusing to acknowledge me when I’d said hello and had told him I’d see him at lunch hour. But, today his problems are not enough to eclipse the chemicals still floating my brain from last night.

It is a little wounding to my ego, though, that she’s thinking about him and not all that kissing.

“Uh…well, he’s got _a lot_ of ground to make up. You know that. I don’t know how anyone could be expected to make that much of a leap.”

“Yeah, but… Is it? It’s only a year. He was only sick for a year. And I can tell Prim’s been really worried about him the last couple of days— since that weird blow up at lunch— even though she’s been trying to hide it. I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong.”

I lean in so I can whisper with no chance that the people behind us can hear, trying to swallow away the lump in my throat, sure there must be some miscommunication happening here.  Like, maybe she’s putting on the act because she’s heard rumors other students are starting to suspect something, so that must be it.

That must be it.

But I don’t like how sincere she sounds. I also don’t like that I have goosebumps suddenly and one side of my scalp has gone tingly.

“Katniss, you _know_ what’s going on with him. I don’t understand why you’re even asking.”  I lean closer, whisper quieter, “Especially here.”

I lean back so I can read her face.

Dread settles in my gut with the abruptness of a gunshot, because she looks truly perplexed. Her brows come closer together as she must see my own response, and then I can see the moment her confusion turns to alarm.

_She doesn’t know!  She doesn’t know! Oh my God, she doesn’t know!_

But she _has_ to know.  Her mom and Prim wouldn’t have kept that from her. She and I have talked our way around it all year, very carefully, but definitely I thought we’d been on the same page. That’s why I proposed I tutor him to begin with, to become a shield for Prim in case collateral damage starts flying.

HOW CAN SHE NOT KNOW?

“Peeta, what don’t I know?”

Her alarm turns to fear, I can see it as her eyes widen and her lips part open.

I look down at my notes, trying to keep my breathing controlled as I start to pencil out a ‘Wait until we’re alone,’ with a shaky hand, except both of her hands clamp over mine and squeeze painfully.

“ _Peeta_ ,” she pleads. “What’s wrong?”

_Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God._

What’ve I done?

______________

I manage to scribble out my message, adding on the word ‘danger,’ and according to the study hall clock, Katniss stares at it for five strait minutes. I’m shaking and ready to vomit the entire time. The spell only breaks when, after I try again to shake the tremors from my hands, I also write,

‘I thought you knew,’

and then

‘I’m sorry.’

This draws her gaze to me finally, and while I expected anger, I’m surprised by how red and glassy her eyes are under the expression of something that feels more like defeat than anything else.

She quietly gathers up her things, and I hurry to do the same, following her out under the critical glare of the study hall monitor.  As soon as the door closes behind us and we’re in the hall, I’m trying to plead, a string of, “Katniss, please wait.  Katniss, I’m so sorry.  Katniss, I swear to God I thought you knew.  Katniss, I don’t understand why Prim and your mom—”

Katniss spins on a dime, eyes wide, faint stains down her cheeks from tears.  Just as quickly, she’s two steps my way, into my space, shoving a finger into my chest so hard it has to hurt her even more than it hurts me.  

Between barred teeth and a blaze of seething fury, she gets out a choppy, warning of a whisper, “ _What…about…my mom and Prim?_ ”

I take a step back, still reeling and stunned to know how to respond.

But just as quickly, ice covers her face like a mask.

“You know what, never mind. It’s my mistake for trusting you.”

“But, Katniss, you—” Things start slipping from my arms onto the floor, but I ignore them. “You knew. That’s what we talked around when I offered to tutor him. You _had_ to have known! I don’t understand.” I scan the hall frantically, making sure no one is around, and beg in whispers, “You had to have known. I thought you knew. I wouldn’t have kept something like this from you, please, you know that. I’ll explain. Or Prim should, but—”

“Don’t worry; for the life of me, I can’t figure out the why, but I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to figure _who_.”

She turns her back on me and marches straight to her locker, shoving in her stuff before making off for what ends up being Prim’s classroom this period.  I manage to keep up, but things are still falling from my arms. She spots her sister through the window, and waits until Prim looks up before crooking her finger.

The teacher notices, and comes to the door to intervene.

“Prim needs to be excused from class,” Katniss tells him, clearly impatient. “She’s needed at home right now.”  

“Miss Everdeen, you can’t just—”

Katniss cuts him off.

“Mr. Mellark is her guardian. He has the right to pull her from class. He is exercising that right. _Right now_.”

The teacher looks to me, unhappily, but I nod and technically she’s right, so after giving us both looks of disapproval, he turns and beckons Prim to pack up her things into her bookbag.  I can see over Katniss’ shoulder into the room that her cheeks are purple-red, but it’s telling that she’s refusing to look at either of us in question as to what’s happening.

I’m guessing she already knows.

I backtrack and grab the things of mine that have fallen, then, like Katniss, shove everything into my locker. I have to run to catch up with both of them as they push out through the main doors.

Prim starts to talk— maybe bargain, maybe defend, maybe explain— but Katniss puts her palm out as a warning to shut up and keeps walking at a pace we struggle to keep up with.  By the time we’re finally to their lane, Prim and I are both worn down emotionally and physically. Prim hasn’t looked at me even once, even though I’ve looked at her a lot. She looks ashamed.

Katniss is several hundred feet ahead of us and gets to the house first.  But even from that distance, the force with which she opens the door after unlocking it is audible.

Katniss waits for us, standing in the middle of the kitchen with a presence like an inferno.

And as soon as the door’s closed, the world— my world— officially begins to burn.

“He’s not Jeremy, he’s actually his younger brother Jack, the one that _supposedly_ died. Am I right?”

Prim  stares at her shoes and is absolutely mute, though her bookbag makes a _thump_ on the floor after its strap slips off her shoulder.   

Since she won’t answer, Katniss looks to me.

I nod, because yes, that’s exactly true.  

“What I don’t understand, is why, _why_ , a twelve-year-old-boy took on the identity of his fourteen, probably now-fifteen-year-old, dead brother to begin with.”

I wait to see if Prim will answer this, but Katniss actually wants no answer this time, because she rolls on, voice louder by the second.

“Unless, of course, it has something… to do... with trying… _to cheat… THE REAPING_!”

Katniss scratches at her forehead, then rubs at it, then hits it repeatedly with the side of her fist.

“ _What the hell were you two thinking!_ ”

Prim’s face snaps up, finally.

“Peeta had nothing to do with—”

“ _I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU AND MOM!_ ” Her voice splits from the sheer force of emotion. She looks like a caged animal. She moves as though she’s going to pace, then stops. Takes a half step again, then stops again. Does the same thing again. She’s not even looking at us, or at anything. Her eyes seem fixed on something inside her head. “Mom was good at keeping things quiet if she knew I’d be upset about them, and forcing you into it. But this, Prim.  How could you two keep this from me? Forget even that the woman is dead now, how could _you_ justify not telling me something _THAT MIGHT GET US ALL SHOT_? How is it I didn’t deserve to even know?”

Prim is crying now, and breaks into a sob almost immediately after the tears start.  I want to put an arm around her to comfort her, and also ask Katniss to calm down, but I don’t feel comfortable getting between them.  

Because Katniss’ anger at Prim is entirely justified: Following her mother’s lead, well meaning or not, what’s going on is something that could absolutely get anyone with knowledge killed. And maybe even those without.

“Whose idea was it,” Katniss demands.

Prim is crying too hard to answer, so I do.

“Their parents.”

“And why?  Grief? Did they think that since they lost one son to sickness, and the other one might die too, they might as well take advantage of a shared year of isolated bed rest to save their youngest from, what, two years of Reapings if he managed to survive?” She’s shaking her head in disbelief. “How far am I off?”

“You’re not.” But I correct, “But three years of Reapings: Right before he died, Jeremy was excused with a doctor’s interview from what would’ve been his third reaping.”

“So Jack, in his shoes, only has four Reapings left to face in his life, instead of seven. Clever,” Katniss says, with hostility, tapping the floorboards with her boot toe. “Clever, and,” the words “ _REALLY STUPID_ ,” loudly follow language that makes both Prim and I wince.

“How could mom go along with this,” Katniss interrogates Prim, unmoved by the sobbing. “What made her think it was okay to wrap you up into this? Wrap us up into this?”

“She didn’t,” Prim finally manages to get words out, struggling against hiccups and the threat of hyperventilating. “His parents…”  But then, such a huge mass of snot drips from her nose from the absolute violence of her sobbing that right after she grinds her sleeve across her face to clear it, she’s found her own Everdeen fire and comes back at Katniss with stuffy-affected screaming, “YOU ALWAYS HATED HER!  BUT IT WASN’T HER FAULT!”  She’s hiccuping, shaking, face a mess.  “ _They_ did this, Katniss. Jack didn’t do it. Mom didn’t do it. _They did it!_ To him, and to us. We didn’t tell you because you would’ve just turned them in to protect us, and then they’d all be dead.”

Prim manages a controlled descent to her knees, and Katniss looks like she’s been punched in the gut by that last statement.

Accusation.  

After a few seconds of looking stunned, tears start running down Katniss’ cheeks, and that same defeated look I saw in study hall, and outside the bathroom the night of the funeral, is back.

She asks next, now very subdued, “How are they planning to deal with the identification check?”

Prim just shakes her head.

Katniss looks to me, and I can only shrug.

He’s told me they have a ‘plan,’ which is _all_ Jeremy— Jack— will tell me.  But I’ve doubted the truth of it for awhile.  I’ve been telling myself that all I can do is try to help him manage school as best he can, because if there isn’t really a plan, if nothing else, at least tutoring and school work is a distraction for him before the inevitable, and it means that if the authorities come questioning everyone who knows him, then I have a tale I can try to wind that, if I’m very convincing, puts Prim in his circle _only because of me_ — not because of her helping in her mother’s work—  and so puts her further from the danger zone.

And the only reason I’m gambling on _that_ working, is because I actually have a plausible reason I might’ve befriended ‘Jeremy Finnegan’ which has zero to do with the Everdeens: I can spin it that when I first saw him this year, I truly believed I was recognizing Jack as an illness-weakened Jeremy— I’m told there is a very strong resemblance, and also that the family destroyed all photographs which could distinguish them— whom I _did_ actually meet before. In my Sophomore year, the junior high wrestlers came on a field trip to get tips from the high school wrestlers.

And, after all, two years is believably long enough to remember someone in general whom you met once, but hard to remember in detail.

Of course, when I saw Jack in the hall the first day of school this year, as he approached me nervously looking for Prim, I _had_ realized something wasn’t right. Not because he was a small, scrawny young man— the whole school genuinely seems to buy that his year of sickness and being bedridden and losing a brother left a previously healthy boy lean and sickly and too moody and depressed to associate with his old friends— but because the Jeremy Finnegan I had supposedly met in that wrestler’s field trip not only didn’t recognize me, he was _completely_ blank when I was talking about various wrestling holds.  I’d remembered he’d had a birthmark on the inside of his forearm, which I’d seen while showing him a pin maneuver, and so I grabbed the kid’s wrist and looked.

The current version of Jeremy Finnegan was all smooth, olive flesh.

So began our new acquaintance.

“So mom told you to befriend him in school this year? Or was that just you?”

 Prim shakes her head. “She told me to keep away, but he was so lost at school, I just couldn’t.”

“I don’t understand, Prim. Why? Just… why.”

 Katniss shakes her head. It is more than defeat I in her eyes.

It’s despair.  

She’s devoted everything she is and has to protecting Prim, and here, she’s sucker-punched by a twist she could never have seen coming.

“You helped those people, Katniss,” Prim whines, trying to make her see, but also apologizing with her tone, “with the money from the funeral.  Don’t say you can’t understand. He’s alone and hurting.”

Katniss takes immediate offense.

“But you just said I’d turn them in to the executioner, Prim! Which is it? Am I an actual human being with a heart, _your sister who loves you_ , that could’ve handled being told the truth about something like this, or a cold-hearted witch who’d’ve run straight to Cray?” She seems to realize how harsh her words were, and softens just a little after taking a breath.  “Look, the difference is, Prim, that the money was a matter of giving up what we could spare, something we hadn’t come to rely on yet. But our safety, _my family’s safety_ , is something I would _never_ sacrifice. Forget Finnegan; did you ever once stop to think what this would do to me? The danger of mixing Peeta up in all this?”

“Katniss,” I try to interrupt, “that was my doing.”

Katniss simply holds her palm out, message clear: She’s talking to Prim, not me.

“I would’ve told them neither of you knew,” Prim sniffs.

“Prim, even if they could possibly believe you… Do you understand what I’m saying? Do you have any idea what it would do to me if something happens _to you_?” There is nothing in this world as important to me as _you_.”

Prim has fallen silent, spent.

“Katniss,” I try to see if maybe we can call it a break, they both clearly need one, “maybe you should just—”

“Out.” She points to the door, tired voice suddenly sharp and powerful.

“Katniss!” I’d already started explaining my part, that I was trying to protect Prim. Why is she telling me to leave? “I don’t understand. I’m not your enemy in this. I’m the best thing you’ve—”

“Just leave. Now.”

“Katniss…” My hands come up, palms out, as I step closer to her, frustrated and determined to assert myself for all our sakes, since she’s clearly still reeling, “Don’t do this.”

“You don’t belong here, Peeta,” she says, eyes cold, voice now flat as she stares at the wall somewhere beyond my shoulder. “I never wanted you here. You don’t have a place here. You don’t have a part in the Everdeens, and come my birthday, I’m going to make that final. Now, once and for all, get the picture, pack your things, and go with them.”  

Then she crosses the room, opens the front door, and slams it on the way out.

_______________

I pen Katniss a letter of apology and explain my end of things, then leave it on the table.  The boxes my stuff came in are stored in the closet, so I take one out and fill it with my sketch box and as many of my clothes that can fit in, and then carry it and myself back to the bakery.

I don’t dare explain to dad what’s really happened, so instead I make something up about us having a fight over her being upset at how much I try to do for them— because it’s innocent enough and also given everything that’s happened, believable. He hugs me, and tries to console me. I try to pretend that I care. But, heavy in the entire conversation is the question of how mom will react.

And she does react.

I’ve never seen her so red, or so angry.

And I’m not sure whether she’s really so angry at dad or myself for making ‘foolish decisions’ and ‘throwing good food at Seam pigs,’ or if, really, she isn’t actually more furious that ‘Seam trash’ had the gall to reject her Merchant son.

I’m forbidden from remaining within the building for the night. Dad almost starts to countermand her, but she’s so angry we all know there’s no way he could without it turning to violence, and all of three of us guys communicate though secret glances that none of us wants to deal with that tonight.  

So, we all give away to the force of her will.  

I make my bed in the woodshed.

My brother sneaks me out a few blankets later, which I huddle into against the frame of shed’s entry, so I can look up and out at the night sky. A little after ten, he comes back out and tells me dad says I’m supposed to sneak into the office through the window, and spend the rest of the night there.

I decline.

I started my day under the stars, I might as well finish it that way, too.

And anyway, the cold is numbing, and I need to be numbed.

__________________________


	5. Chapter 19

A/N I’m posting this chapter entirely behind the cut, because it and Chapter 18 are going up so close together (within hours of each other), and I don’t want to inadvertently spoil someone.  

 **Also, the same trigger warnings from Chapter 18 apply, and will continue to apply going forward.** Again, please message me if you need clarifications before reading more.

  [Part 1 here](https://everlarkbirthdaydrabbles.tumblr.com/post/159146796660/hello-my-birthday-is-april-3rd-and-i-was) / [Part 2 here](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/164510448383/geometry-part-2) / [Part 3 here](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/164777853968/geometry-part-3) / [Part 4 here](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/165116911348/geometry-part-4) / [Part 5 ](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/165225028603/geometry-part-5)/ [Part 6](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/165774060883/geometry-part-6) /  [Part 7](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/165940004313/geometry-part-7)  
[Part 8 ](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/166084919063/geometry-part-8)[Part 9](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/166537495498/geometry-part-9)  [Part 10](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/166765508203/geometry-chapter-10).  [Part 11](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/168492614693/geometry-part-11)  [Part 12](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/176523406718/geometry-chapter-12)  [Part 13](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/176523420958/geometry-part-13)  [Part 14](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/177072754733/geometry-chapter-14)  [Part 15](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/177631202208/geometry-chapter-15)   [Part 15 “extra” ](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/178406430008/geometryextra)  [Chapter 16](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/180192760938/geometry-chapter-16) [Chapter 17](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/180372033413/geometry-17-happy-thanksgiving-surprise)  [Chapter 18](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/180670380723/geometry-chapter-18)  

_____________

_Friday, April 4th_

I think I sleep maybe a few hours, after finally dosing off. Then I’m up and on to my normal morning of carrying in wood, lighting the ovens, and working on prep.  My dad, I notice, doesn’t come down before I leave.  Instead, my brother does.  He gives me a long look-over to see how I’m holding up, and then we both work in silence.  When it’s time for school, I don’t even bother to pull on a button shirt over my t-shirt. I really couldn’t give a damn if I look like a mess today.  I already know from using the bathroom that my eyes are bloodshot like I’ve been drinking all night instead of berating myself, being furious at Katniss, or simply crying intermittently.  And every step I take closer to the school where I might see Katniss, but who I know already it would be a bad idea to see, feels weighted.

I also don’t want to see Jack this morning, but I know I need to face it and have a talk with him. I sneak out of the bakery a bit early, since he often shows up early himself to sit and hide in his first period classroom— in the dark— until other students finally show up.

The poor kid is so alone.

But Madge, who is already at school and stationed at the student-assistant desk of the Principal’s office, spots me through the windowed door and makes a beeline to come out.

“Peeta, good, I have you alone for a second.”

“Madge, now isn’t a good time.”

“What’s wrong?” She doesn’t fail to notice my eyes and how I look.

I’m caught, because I can’t afford to let something on.  And the best play Katniss and I have on staying on the same page and not raising suspicions, is if I say nothing at all and let her do all the talking.

Even if it happens in my absence.

So I shake my head, because nothing is supposed to be wrong.

“My mom was just in a rotten mood.” She knows what that means, we’re close enough acquaintances for that. “We had a big argument. And plus I didn’t sleep much the last two nights, so I’m just dragging.”

She isn’t convinced.

“Things are fine, Madge, really. Ask Katniss if you have to, once she gets here.”

She isn’t completely convinced, but the defer to Katniss— really I’m just making sure the ball’s in Katniss’ court— and the line about my mother, seems to be enough for her to let it slide, especially since she seems determined about whatever it was she wanted to talk to me about.

She literally grabs my arm and starts pulling me down the hall. I try to remove her grip as politely as I can, but she only relinquishes once she’s convinced I’m going to keep following. She leads me to the study hall room, which is empty, and which is the last room in this school I ever want to see again.  It’s locked, but she has a key, probably because she’s got that Principal’s student-assistant position.

“Madge, what’re we doing?” I’m not just _not_ wanting to hear whatever it is she still wants to tell me about Katniss’ supposedly needing me, but I’m frankly uncomfortable being seen entering a deserted classroom with another girl.  

But she gives me a warning look.

Whatever it is, she clearly feels this is important, not fun.

She starts to get frustrated, so I just go in. She flips the light switch then weaves her way directly to the back corner desk, the one I was originally going to put Katniss and I at for the semester before Katniss claimed the front row for us instead.

She taps the table until I look.

The dandelion.

It’s Katniss’ dandelion. Not only drawn, but actually carved into the wood, and then gone over with marker in the grooves.

“Who carved that?”

“Katniss. Last year. As in Junior year last year, not last Fall last year. And Peeta…”

She taps the carving again until I’m looking back down at it. Then, with her fingertip, she traces a straight line across one of the petals.  

“Cross the ‘T’ here, Peeta.”

With that, she leaves.

I have to look at it for a whole minute, tracing the grooves with my fingers, replaying in my mind’s eye the exact way Katniss draws it each time, the same way, over and over, never altering the way she draws out the pattern.

And once I finally understand what Madge meant— what the little swipe of her finger meant— something new comes in to view.

And, wow, does it hurt.

__________________

I manage to intercept Finnegan in the hall on his way to the Geometry classroom, and since no one’s around yet, I start to explain that I have to stop tutoring him and take a step back. He doesn’t need it explained— he’s already anticipated— and while I’m still talking he simply turns and walks off, head hanging.

Katniss, I think, avoids me like I avoid her today.  In History Class, we barely make eye contact. We certainly don’t speak.

I watch from the corner of my eye to see if she draws a dandelion in the margins of her notes.

She doesn’t.

I don’t see her for the rest of the day.

Back at the bakery, my brother passes on the news that I’m allowed to move back into my room upstairs. From mom, I still get silent treatment and murderous glares. The air feels charged when she’s in the room. She drops mumbled comments about Katniss and me— hotly derogatory to both of us— throughout the afternoon, and my knuckles start hurting from constantly fisting my hands in my struggle to not take the bait.

I don’t see dad all afternoon, because he keeps to his office.  

I ask my brother if she hit him.

He doesn’t answer, so the answer is yes.

He doesn’t come up for dinner or even after that, and so I guess he’ll sleep in his office.

It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.

 

__________________

_Saturday, April 5th_

I remember sharply the moment I woke up in bed, because I didn’t know where I was. I remember it finally settled on me that I was back in my room above the bakery. And I remember the heavy sense of regret, and disorientation.

Or maybe I’m confusing the sense of disorientation from later.

I remember starting my morning prep, getting the ovens lit, being angry.

I remember that all I could think about was Katniss, and how we needed to talk. That she must be hurting.

That she’d hurt me, too.

That we needed to talk.  

I knew what was at stake for them. I know that I felt an overwhelming need to go see her and confront her, but then to comfort her, too.

I remember as I mashed a large vat of sugar cookie mix with one of our giant wooden paddles, I was channeling my aggression towards the Capitol, Jack’s parents, my mom— death— into my work, straining against the raw ingredients with every fiber I had.

I remember the muscles of my back, and arms rippling with the exertion.

I remember finally telling Katniss— where isn’t clear, it was dark, and I had to watch my step— that…

I told her that…

I don’t remember how we got into a mine shaft, actually.

I remember hitting my head, but that it was okay, though.

I definitely remember needing her to hear me, to listen.

I remember telling her that…

I remember saying to her that…

…

I don’t remember what I said, actually. Which is strange.

I remember that sugar cookies with piped, yellow royal icing dandelions are on special today at the Mellark Bakery.

Three cookies, for one credit.

__________________

I’m aware of falling, but things go a smear of bleeding grays and whites before the next thing I’m aware of is my dad and brother yelling at Katniss.  I struggle back onto my feet, yelling at them to stop yelling at _her_ , immediately furious and ready to fight in her defense.  

Mom is laughing.  

In the fog of chaos, my ears ring so loudly that everything else sounds far away. I’m aware of trying to shove my brother backwards, away from where I see Katniss at the edge of my vision.  He grabs at me.

And he’s still yelling at Katniss.

We grapple in what feels like slow motion, but he keeps yelling at her, like I’m not even there. I try to maneuver him around behind me with a pivot, but my body doesn’t coordinate right and he avoids the move so easily I slip and almost dive head-first to the floor, except that he catches me.

And dad’s still yelling, too.

It registers that he doesn’t sound angry, but afraid.  

I try to turn around, to see and figure out how it is a burly baker could be so afraid of Katniss Everdeen, but I can’t because my brother has secured an iron-hug around my middle. Panic churns in my gut and I yell at him to let go, kicking him repeatedly in the shin until his grip loosens. The strain it takes to finally free myself makes stars shower across my vision.

Which reminds me of the meteor shower.

Mom is still laughing in Katniss’ face.

I start forward to back mom off, to protect Katniss from her, but the arms of my brother snake back around me, jerk me back, make my head pound.

Something isn’t right.

I don’t have things right.

It _is_ my mom laughing, but it’s Katniss in _her_ face.

Maybe that’s why there’s so much yelling.

But Katniss is so quiet— sooo quiet— why would she be bothering them?

I try so hard to focus, to _think_!

_Peeta, THINK!_

I think so hard it hurts my head. It’s like someone’s whacking at my skull with a rubber mallet.

_Focus, Peeta!_

_Focus on Katniss, Peeta. She_ _’s everything._

I try to focus.

I try to focus.

I focus on Katniss.

In the middle of all the other noise, Katniss is so amazingly calm.

So still.

“Katniss, _put the knife down_.” That’s my dad.

Knife…

I don’t see a knife.

Katniss’ braid hangs straight down her back, with no sway in it at all, as though it’s an extension of her spine. Her father’s too-big hunting jacket is her leather skin, pulled taut around her tense shoulders, bunching around her arms…

She has my mom’s blouse fisted in one hand.

There’s blood.

A little trickle of it, coming from my mom’s throat where Katniss has one of our large kitchen knives held against it.  

 _There_ _’s_ the knife.

I hear her name cried out in my own confused voice, but it sounds muddled.

“Katniss, just put the knife down, okay?”  It’s my dad again.  He’s edged his way closer to her— to them.

The trickle of blood continues to make headway down the front of my mother’s apron, gaining volume and momentum.

The room goes dead silent.

And only then does Katniss finally speak.

It’s quiet.

Terrifying.

Measured.

“If you ever touch him again, I will kill you. I will kill you. I will kill you.” Her words are completely unhurried, and almost have a melody to them. “And I will kill you. Do we have an understanding?”

My mother, despite her position and the threat, starts to scream back in Katniss’ face.

“I’ll have you hung for this, you filthy little—”

Her words choke to a halt, Katniss’ doing.

With the knife.

“You overestimate the value I place on my own life.”  I don’t know this calm, almost-melodic Katniss.  “But if it suits you, go ahead. Because I promise,” there’s another choked sound that comes from my mom, from Katniss applying pressure to the knife, and then Katniss is suddenly changed, her voice _everything_ that embodies hatred and passion as she leans so far into my mom’s face that she’s screaming straight into her mouth, “ _I WILL KILL YOU BEFORE THEY KILL ME!_ ”

Despite the ferocity of the moment…

…Katniss doesn’t attack.

No one moves.

It’s a standoff.

And mom finally looks scared.

“No one is dying or getting killed.”  That’s dad, after a few seconds pass without something happening. His voice is strained, but trying to be soothing.  “Katniss, come on now, let me have the knife.”

He takes a step closer to them. Then another.

“Katniss, the knife. Please.”

Nothing changes at first, but slowly, Katniss’ body relaxes.  And as soon as she starts to pull the weapon away, dad is there to grab it and push himself between the two of them so nothing more can happen.  

My brother lets me ago, flinging me around his side so he can get in front of Katniss and move her further away from my mom.  Once she’s yielded a few steps, he puts his arms out and starts corralling us both towards the back door.  

“Both of you, go,” he says. “We’ll take care of mom.”

His words set mom off again, and an un-interrupted round of awfulness streams out from her at the top of her lungs. Threats of turning Katniss over to the law, horrible, degrading things about the rest of us.

Dad starts yelling, too. My brother just keeps on funneling us out. We’re almost to the door.

“No one is going to the authorities,” I hear dad shout.

“Like hell they aren’t!” Mom screams back in his face.  “That little bitch just-”

At the word ‘bitch,’ everything becomes surreal. Like it’s on a vid-viewer, not in my real life.  Even the sound of my own shouting seems distant as I launch forward, shoving my brother out of the way to get at her.

I’m halfway there when I get yanked backward, off my feet. My butt slams into the floor, sending sears of pain up my tail bone. The hammer blows at my skull start striking harder. But damn her to hell, I’m going to get to her. I force myself up, and make a rush again.

Yet again, my brother stops me, grabs me, seizes his arms around me and holds me in place, starts dragging me backward.

But he can’t stop my voice.

I’m yelling, swearing, calling mom all the names I’ve every dreamed of, spit flying from my mouth as I struggle in his grip.

And mom yells right back at me, meeting me word-for-every-ugly-word.

I hear my brother yell at Katniss to open the door, right beforeI’m shoved outside.

I stumble backwards. Katniss comes out just in time to grab me and keep me from going down.

There’s more yelling inside, between mom and dad, howling, swearing, threats, and he’s madder than I’ve ever heard him, matching her for fury.  

My brother says through the screen, “Get him home.  Now. And none of this happened,” before slamming the door on us.

I feel like the world is reeling.

I see the meteor shower again.

“Katniss,” I ask, though I have no idea what I’m asking.  And, for a split second, there’s two of her.

“Come on, Peeta.”  Her hand slips in between my arm and around my back. She uses her body to help me navigate the steps, but then I feel an overwhelming sickness and sink down to vomit into the dirt.

All I can tell while I’m retching is that Katniss is screaming.

____________________

 A/N - I warned you it was going to get bumpy.  Trigger Warnings apply going forward.

___________________

As a reminder, since it might not show up if you’re viewing me on mobile: Here’s the page with my other Everlark fics: <https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/myff>


	6. Chapter 20

A/N - Sorry it’s been so long for an update.

**Also, the same trigger warnings from Chapter 18 continue to apply, and will continue to apply going forward.** Again, please message me if you need clarifications before reading more. 

[Part 1 here](https://everlarkbirthdaydrabbles.tumblr.com/post/159146796660/hello-my-birthday-is-april-3rd-and-i-was) / [Part 2 here](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/164510448383/geometry-part-2) / [Part 3 here](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/164777853968/geometry-part-3) / [Part 4 here](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/165116911348/geometry-part-4) / [Part 5 ](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/165225028603/geometry-part-5)/ [Part 6](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/165774060883/geometry-part-6) /  [Part 7](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/165940004313/geometry-part-7)  
[Part 8 ](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/166084919063/geometry-part-8)[Part 9](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/166537495498/geometry-part-9)  [Part 10](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/166765508203/geometry-chapter-10).  [Part 11](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/168492614693/geometry-part-11)  [Part 12](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/176523406718/geometry-chapter-12)  [Part 13](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/176523420958/geometry-part-13)  [Part 14](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/177072754733/geometry-chapter-14)  [Part 15](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/177631202208/geometry-chapter-15)   [Part 15 “extra” ](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/178406430008/geometryextra)  [Chapter 16](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/180192760938/geometry-chapter-16) [Chapter 17](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/180372033413/geometry-17-happy-thanksgiving-surprise)  [Chapter 18](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/180670380723/geometry-chapter-18)   [Chapter 19 Here](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/180679341643/geometry-chapter-19)

______________

Acrid, pungent, foulness assaults me from everywhere, eyes, ears, nose like a grey-green oozing river of smoke, soaking into my pores, absorbing into my system.  It’s suffocating me, seeping down my throat into my lungs with claws, meaning to rob me of all the oxygen. I struggle against it, moan, mummer, try to turn away, but I can’t.  

I can’t breathe.

Suddenly, something gives and unlike my nightmares of drowning, it’s like my head finally breaks clear of the fog and I gasp in air.

“There we go,” I hear a man’s voice try to sooth at the same time I hear a girl’s voice saying my name frantically.  Doctor Sawbowh is in front me, and he recapping a little vial. My reactions are slow and before I can stop him, he’s prying my eyes wide to examine them. It hurts them, and my head.  He says, not to me, “Okay, Katniss, calm down, his pupils look even. I think he’ll be okay. I have to go check on Mrs. Mellark, but I’ll be back.”

I have no spatial grasp of where I am.  I focus, and have to focus hard.  I’m in the bakery, on the floor.  Sitting.  I try turn my head to see where Katniss is, but I can’t turn my head without a lot of pain.

“Katniss?”

“I’m here,” she says, I hear her voice in my ear, feel the pressure of something— her head?— against the back of mine.  I feel arms around me tighten, they’re wrapped around my chest from behind.  I look down at my legs, stretched out away from me on the floor, and see hers wrapped around my middle.  

“Did I pass out?”

“Oh my God, Peeta.” She presses her face into my shoulder and her arms squeeze tighter.

“Not so tight,” I croak, as lights start to careen in my vision again. I gently pry her hands apart from around my chest; breathing still feels like it takes work, as does concentrating. She immediately lets her arms drop away, which I regret, so I tangle our fingers. She winces, and pulls her hands away. I start to apologize, but she shushes me and wraps up both my hands up with one of hers. I close my eyes and tilt my head back onto her shoulder.

I feel her nose trail across my ear before the heat of her cheek rests hot against the coldness of mine. Her legs loosen up a little bit too. “Better,” she asks quietly.

“Better,” I mummer, jokingly suggestive. “Let’s do this more often.”

She doesn’t say anything, but then again, my head hurts enough I don’t mind.

I finally force my eyes open, once I’m with it enough to realize there’s hushed voices and something else going on across the kitchen from us.

The Doctor and my dad are on their knees, looking at something on the floor I can’t see. My brother is standing over them, looking angry.

“I’m tired, Katniss,” I say, and then decide Katniss is a good place to sleep against.

_________________________

Katniss and I are playing Rummy.

I’m really tired.

Katniss lays a card down on the pile. I stare at it for a long time and it still doesn’t quite connect for me what the suit is.

“Jack of clubs,” she supplies.  When I look at her, wondering how she knew, she gives me pained smile and then reaches over and nudges the card a little my way. “It goes on your run, there.”

I follow her finger.  There’s a run of clubs there. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Ten.  No, nine, then ten.

I stare at the Jack Katniss has left for me, and then at my hand. Something about it makes me uneasy. I don’t want to take it. I’m really tired.

“ _You_ should play it, then,” I say.  Why did she discard it?

“No, it’s okay. You take it. I’m playing my own strategy.”

She nudges it again.

“What,” she asks, as my eyes narrow at her.

“I don’t believe you. You’re not wearing your strategic scowl.”

Her crooked smile makes me smile. She looks like she’d laugh, if she weren’t so tired. She looks tired too.  I twist so I can look out the living room window down over the town square.

It’s dark out. This isn’t Katniss’ house. We’re at my house. We’re at a little folding table my family uses for games.

“I’m really tired,” I say, because I’m so tired I feel compelled to say it. There’s a reason we’re staying awake, and that we’re here in my house.  I know I know what the answer is. I just have to think about it; I could ask Katniss, but I feel like if I do, it’ll distress her. I touch the side of my head and explore, until my fingers probe a large bump and I wince from the dull bruise of it. I got hit. There was a fight.

The doctor was here. He said I have to stay awake.

There’s just a hint of a sigh as she stands up and brings her chair around the table to next to mine. When she settles in, her arm is pressed full against mine.

“Hey, no cheating,” I half-protest, half-tease. “You’re trying to look at my cards again.”

“Right.”

I snatch my hand away dramatically; trying to level a grin I hope is attractive as I tilt my face her way, laughing a little.  And then wince again because it makes my head hurt, and swim a little.

I’m really tired. I know I’m supposed to stay awake though.

Why was that again?

“Here, take the card and play it,” she leans forward and pulls it off the stack towards my holdings.  It feels like she’s watching to see how I’ll do, like she’s not sure I’m smart enough to figure out where it goes.

I grumble, a little insulted, and slide it under the ten of clubs, exactly where it fits.

“Happy?”

“Any other cards you can play from it?” She asks like she already knows there is. I’ve slipped and let my hand show; the Queen of clubs is right there on the end, bunched together with two more Queens, a set, ready to play. I separate them and almost lay them down, but something makes me not want to do it. I don’t like the Queens. My fingers tease along the top, and I’m taken with an urge to toss one of them on the discard pile.

But why throw away a perfectly good set?

“Mom,” I say, once I realize what it’s triggering. Thoughts of her.  Something happened to her. “Remind me?”

I feel Katniss’ anxiety through our connected arms, how she straightens in her chair and goes tense.

I feel a little sick. A pang of guilt too, as some ghost idea floats just out of reach that I hurt mom somehow. I remember being so angry at her that my brother and dad had to pull me off her. Did I attack her?

Or, was it that I attacked my brother?  But why would I do that?

I can’t remember. It’s a blur.  I put my cards down and stare straight ahead, straining to remember, but it’s mostly just jumbles and holes. There was blood.

I swallow bile as I try harder.

“Did I… Did I hurt someone?”

Katniss sighs louder, my name on the breeze of her breath. “No, Peeta. You didn’t hurt anyone.”

She puts her cards on the table and then leans sideways enough to run her fingers through my hair, on the side of my head that doesn’t hurt, soothing me.  I let my eyes drift shut.  

I could fall asleep with her doing this.

She ends by tucking what hair she can behind my ear.

My neck jars as my head falls, and she’s shaking me awake; I drifted off that fast.

“A few more hours,” she runs her hands through my hair again, over and over, scratching my scalp gently with her nails so that I groan a little because of how nice it feels.

“I’m trying.” I catch a whiff of my own breath, and it’s awful and I say so.  “Remind me how I hit my head?”

Her hand hesitates a fraction of a second.

“Your mom hit you.”

I remember, a little.  A rolling pin.

I look over to her, cracking open one eye, “Why?”

Another hesitation.

“It was a big argument. It got out hand.” Katniss sounds not just tired, but a little bored.  

“You’ve told me that before, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, but you’re getting better.  The doctor said the fog would take some time to go away. I have to keep you awake until he comes back in the morning.”

“You’re watching me.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“In case you have seizures.”

Her fingers and nails resume their light, pleasurable assault on my scalp, and my eye drifts closed again.

“I love you, Katniss,” I moan after a little of that, my emotions intense and grave and eye-stinging, and I had no premonition the words were going to come out of me.  They come out with such pathetic sadness, but also with another whiff of my breath so foul I almost gag. “Did I vomit?”

“A few times.” My confession of love— and foul breath— doesn’t make her interrupt her carding through my hair. It feels incredible, and my head lolls backwards into the contact. After a bit, she asks, “Do you feel up to brushing your teeth?”

“Yes, please.” I nod as I say it, and the movement makes me feel like I have a big rock where my brain is, sliding first forward and then backward in my skull.

She slides her arm under mine and helps me stand up. It’s good, because I sway a little once I’m on my feet, and the room spins some.

“Take a second,” she warns.

I close my eyes and try to feel which way gravity pulls.

“We had a fight in the kitchen?”

“Yes.”

“You were there.” Smudgy memories of her screaming suddenly assault me.  I grab her arm and spin her so I can look her over. “Are you hurt?”

Her expression is tight, but she shakes her head. “I’m fine, Peeta.”

But she’s not. One of her hands is bandaged.

“What happened?” I try to lift it, gently, but she pulls it away.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. Come on, let’s brush your teeth.”

She wags the bandaged hand through the air as if to prove it’s not an injury too terrible for movement, so I let her lead me as we shuffle down the hall to the bathroom.  The apartment is quiet. When I ask, she tells me it’s probably around two in the morning and that my brother is in his room sleeping, and my dad and Prim are in my parents’ room.  

“Why is Prim here?”

“She’s helping with your mom. Here, come on, brush your teeth.”  

She has to explore the vanity to find the toothpaste, but she picks my toothbrush from the others without having to ask for help. I work my teeth slowly, giving the bristles plenty of back-and-forth across my gums. It’s a little strange, watching Katniss in the mirror as she watches me.  We both look exhausted.

“Hey,” I say, around a mouthful of foam, “what’s a dentist guilty of, if he lies under oath?”

Katniss eyes narrow in the mirror as they meet mine. She blinks slowly, like she can’t believe I’m about to make a joke.

“A half—” A little spout of foam comes out of my mouth and races down my chin, and I take a second to spit before I face her in the mirror, daring her to laugh. “A half-tooth.”

Katniss doesn’t laugh, in fact her expression stays tight. But I grin at her, goading her, trying to make her smile at least a little.

But it’s a no go. The reflected version of her, crossed arms and frown, don’t change.

“Not funny? Maybe you just didn’t get it. It might help to _molar_ over it a little.”

Her  head drops forward and what little I can see of her expression from that angle makes it look like she’s in pain.

“Peeta, I’m barely holding it together. I can’t handle jokes right now.” Her face comes back up and she gives me a sad smile, and it looks like her eyes are glassing up.

“Okay,” I agree, then rinse.   

“Breath,” she orders, so I turn and give a huff in her direction. Her wince and lean back tell me it wasn’t enough.  She takes my toothbrush and plies on more toothpaste, “Brush your tongue too.”

Once I’ve brushed again, I take a shot of mouthwash. I do feel a little more awake, at least.

“Can I use your toothbrush?”

I’m swishing vigorously, but try to give her a look like she’s crazy.

“I just brushed vomit,” I gutturally protest around the mouthful of liquid, but she just shrugs it off.

“Peeta, honestly, in the grand scheme of things, using your toothbrush isn’t going to be the end of the world.” Still, she rinses it thoroughly under hot water, giving the bristles a firm cleaning with her thumbs.

Once we’re both done, we face each other. While I’m expecting another demand to present my breath for inspection, instead she just stares and reaches up to touch the side of my head that was hit. It’s only a few seconds before she’s doing that thing again where she’s running fingers through my hair.

“Careful, Everdeen, using a guy’s way-gross, vomity toothbrush and then playing with his hair could give the false impression you’re on the bi _cusp_ id of some emotional breakthrough.”

I add a quick, “Sorry. Sorry. I couldn’t not.”

She doesn’t laugh, but at least I do get a tired smile.  We face each other for a little longer, and then she leans forward and up and puts her lips against mine, sliding her arms around me.

“I was so scared.” It sounds like a whimper, once her face has dropped to against the side of my neck.

I hug her, pulling her close. “Well, I’m here. We’re both here.”

I can feel her crying, and I can see it, in the mirror, but that feels impolite, so I reach out and flip off the light and we stay like that until she collects herself.

“So,” I clear my throat and smile, because even in the half-light that reaches in from the hallway, I can tell that cry helped her a little, “what do we do now?”

“More Rummy.”

That doesn’t sound fun, but I guess that’s the plan. I feel bold enough to hook her hand in mine and lead us out of the bathroom.

I catch sight of my parent’s room, door open, and the light on and my feet take me there, instead of the living room, without my permission.  Katniss follows, hand still in mine. I feel a wave of sick again, rising up, the closer I get, but I don’t let it stop me. I’m not sure what I expect to see, but what’s there is my mother laying in bed with her eyes closed, my dad, still as stone, sitting in a chair at the bedside staring at her, but otherwise still as stone, and Prim, curled up in another chair with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, sleeping.

My fingers release Katniss’ as I shuffle over, watching my mom’s shallow breathing make the blanket rise and fall in short, continual bursts. Half of her face seems to sag. Dad doesn’t seem to notice I’m there until I’m standing on the other side of the bed. He looks alarmed, as if I startled him, and then relieved, and then worried; a lot of emotion for only a split second.

“What happened to her?”

He hesitates, but only because he’s tired and his voice cracks badly until he can warm it up. He looked ragged.

“Stroke.”

I look back to Katniss. I don’t know why I expected this to be news to her, too, but it clearly isn’t. She looks— troubled?— then stares down at the floor.

“How?”

“Doctor thinks she got her blood pressure too high, from being angry.”

I nod dumbly, which morphs into a disbelieving head-shaking.  “I can’t believe it.” I blink trying to remember. I remember her very alive, very angry, very loud.  “I remember blood?” I ask him, and then look over her to see if she has any other injuries. “She and Katniss fought, too?”

Katniss’ boots shuffle on the floorboards behind me, and dad looks over at her, before looking back to me. He’s uncomfortable.

“Katniss… got between you and mom, in a way.”

Prim stirs but doesn’t wake, sounding distressed.  But then I accidentally bump the bed with my thigh as I’m looking over mom, and mom’s eyes come open.

I have to take a step back. They’re wide, and intense, but otherwise, the muscles of her face don’t seem to move much, and there’s that uncharacteristic sag.  She looks, so… Weak. Her eyes blink a few times, and her arms shift a little as she shifts her gaze from the ceiling over to where my dad. A strangled sound comes out of her, and then her mouth opens a second later, as though her body couldn’t quite manage the timing. Abruptly, she starts jerking around in small movements, moaning, clearly panicked.

My dad goes for her hand, holding it, saying calming words, telling her she’s okay. Reminding her she’s had a stroke. Her body is healing. Don’t get upset or she’ll make it worse. It feels sad, grave, the way he’s caring over her, dutiful. But, she calms eventually. I watch, fascinated, as he asks her basic questions about how to make her more comfortable. Is she thirsty. Does she want the pillows adjusted. Is the light too bright. Her answers are understandable, mostly, but closer to garbles than English, and her words are slow. It doesn’t feel like my mother, always so tall and proud and fierce.

Prim’s woken during this, and pours a little water into a glass from a pitcher on the night stand and hands it to my dad for her.  His hand gently cradles her head and lifts, as he helps her sip. I hear him tell her that her face is already better, and her words are already clearer, good signs. He says the Doctor will be by later in the morning— It had been worse? The image twists my stomach. I already find this version of my mother on the unsettling side.  What was it like earlier?— Hear him tell her to try and sleep more, so her body can heal more.  

His eyes catch mine, and I can’t help but wonder if we both feel the same mix of pity and righteousness. That somehow, this is justice.

I try to physically shake it from my thoughts, because it’s an awful feeling to have, but that just makes my head hurt. It feels like my brain is untethered inside my skull and free to bounce around.

Once my mother seems pacified, and sinks back sleep, Prim comes around the bed and hugs me because I’m closest, stretching far up onto her toes to look and prod at my head, then goes to hug Katniss. When they separate, Prim tries to do some sort of check-up on Katniss’ hand as well, but Katniss pulls it away and tells her it’s fine. There’s a whispered argument, but it’s over in a matter of a few seconds, and Prim just sighs and comes back to me.

“If it starts bleeding through the bandages, make her come get me,” she whispers, and then goes around to my dad, whose now sagged back into his chair. She gives him a sad look that asks if he’s okay. He just shrugs, looking more vacant by the second, and Prim goes back to her own chair.

A moment later, Katniss tugs on the back of my shirt, and I follow her back out of the room.

“I don’t really feel like cards,” I say. I feel like being sick again. “You don’t have to sleep, do you? Just me?”

Katniss keeps on down the hallway, “Uh, that’s backwards, but yes.”

“Huh?” Okay, my mind is still moving molasses-speed.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m staying awake anyway; I have to watch you.” We’re in the living room now. “We can do something different than cards, though. I’m sick of them, too.”

“Can I just sketch, maybe? And you sleep? Seriously, Katniss. You look exhausted, and I’ll be fine. I promise I’ll stay awake.”

“No,” she says, in a way that says there’s no winning. But then, “If you have any books, maybe I can read while you draw.”

Pretty soon I realize I’m just drawing her dandelion, over and over again, trying to perfect it. For some reason, it feels important. After a few minutes, I have an image of Madge in my mind. It’s not as hazy as earlier, but it’s still a real mess of images.

I’m crossing one of the petals with a line. It looks like a “T.”

I keep at it.

I realize it forms my name, in the petals. She’s been drawing my name.

“Katniss?” We’re both sitting on the couch, but at opposite ends, legs crossed and facing each other.  She has a book in her lap, but I realize when I look up she was already watching me.

I look from her, down to my pad, then back up. I’m about to ask her about it, but then I decide maybe she doesn’t need that from me.

It’s been a long night.

One thing though.

“I remember us arguing… In a mine? Did we have an argument in a mine shaft?”

At first she looks worried, like I’m hallucinating, but when I mention hitting my head and having to watch my step, and a lamp, she relaxes. Or, at any rate, she sags back into the couch.

“You came to see me yesterday. Or this afternoon, I don’t know. I was up in the attic and I guess you heard the rafters, because you came up and got in my face about being a hypocrite.”

“About what?”

She sighs, looking down and taking a few long seconds to watch her own finger—from the unbandaged hand— trace the edges of the book in her lap. “At this point, it doesn’t really matter anymore, Peeta.”

“Why not?”

She just shakes her head. It’s really frustrating. I’m tired of her getting away with dodging.

“What started the thing with my mom, then?”

Katniss finally looks up. She looks scared, and yet, still steady. She takes in a deep breath.

“Because I came by to bring you home.”


	7. Chapter 21

**The same trigger warnings from Chapter 18 continue to apply, and will continue to apply going forward.** Again, please message me if you need clarifications before reading more. 

[Part 1 here](https://everlarkbirthdaydrabbles.tumblr.com/post/159146796660/hello-my-birthday-is-april-3rd-and-i-was) / [Part 2 here](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/164510448383/geometry-part-2) / [Part 3 here](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/164777853968/geometry-part-3) / [Part 4 here](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/165116911348/geometry-part-4) / [Part 5 ](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/165225028603/geometry-part-5)/ [Part 6](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/165774060883/geometry-part-6) /  [Part 7](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/165940004313/geometry-part-7)  
[Part 8 ](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/166084919063/geometry-part-8)[Part 9](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/166537495498/geometry-part-9)  [Part 10](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/166765508203/geometry-chapter-10).  [Part 11](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/168492614693/geometry-part-11)  [Part 12](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/176523406718/geometry-chapter-12)  [Part 13](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/176523420958/geometry-part-13)  [Part 14](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/177072754733/geometry-chapter-14)  [Part 15](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/177631202208/geometry-chapter-15)   [Part 15 “extra” ](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/178406430008/geometryextra)  [Chapter 16](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/180192760938/geometry-chapter-16) [Chapter 17](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/180372033413/geometry-17-happy-thanksgiving-surprise)  [Chapter 18](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/180670380723/geometry-chapter-18)   [Chapter 19 Here ](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/180679341643/geometry-chapter-19)[Chapter 20 Here](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/182106566573/geometry-chapter-20)[  
](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/post/180679341643/geometry-chapter-19)

____________________  


_She was coming to bring me home._

I take that in. Home. 

“What does that mean?”

Katniss avoids, shaking her head. But I keep staring, frustrated, hopeful-- despite my still-pounding headache-- until she puts the book aside with a small sigh then scoots forward to sort through my box of sketches. 

My teeth clamp on my bottom lip and worry at it the deeper she gets into the small chest. Since I came back here a few days ago, I’d put all the sketches of her-- which I’d been keeping separate and secure while at their house to prevent her, or, God forbid, Prim, accidentally coming across them-- back in with the rest of my stuff, buried at the bottom.

My cheeks flush hot as she gives up pulling those last sketches out one at a time and instead pulls the whole sheaf out so she can go through them on her lap. Her breathing stays normal, so that’s good. She’s not too mad, then. I’m so nervous I want to start sketching again, so that I won’t have to face her, but I’m also so desperate to see how she responds that I can’t look away.

That first sketch is a side profile of her face, with just enough of her neck drawn to illustrate her braid curling down around it.  After what feels like forever, she places it carefully back into the box before examining the next one, a picture of her sitting at the lunch table with Prim from the other day. Even though I’m looking at it upside down, I wince a little, because I know it’s not very good. I was sitting next to her, not across, so I had to draw the picture from imagination rather than memory.

Suddenly, Katniss’ head snaps up and my world lurches a little when I jerk in surprise.

“Sorry,” she says, looking a little embarrassed, “you were so still, I thought you’d fallen asleep.”

I laugh, and I know it sounds nervous. 

“I was just waiting for you to get mad.”

Her face scrunches up, “About what?”

I point at the stack of drawings in her lap.

“You seem to think I get mad at you a lot.”

“Well…” I don’t say anything else, because it is sort of how I feel. 

Or how I fear, maybe.

“Just because I don’t say what I’m thinking all the time, doesn’t mean I’m mad at you, Peeta.”

I nod, though not convinced, but at least it’s reassuring that she’s not mad now. 

“Then how do those make you feel?”

[[MORE]]

She looks back at the stack, sliding the one she’s looking at to the side and carding to get a brief idea of the others I’ve drawn: Her at the dining table. Her in the sun: Her in the woods. Usually her face, or her hands. Her smile, so rare. Her grin, the most elusive. Her arms. Hair escaping her braid as it hangs down her back. 

Her in that red shirt.

She freezes when she sees the one I’ve drawn of her braid hanging straight down her back… in the sense that there’s no shirt, just… her back.

And then, after a bit of a wide-eyed delay, she slides the other images back over the strictly from-my-imagination partial nude, and puts the entire stack back in the chest so fast that it’s comical. 

Enough that I almost laugh.

Except, you know, I’m afraid she might murder me.  

My face is on fire, and I look back down to my current sketching and give those dandelions so much focus they probably think their my next great masterpiece. 

We’re both dead silent.

Until the terror gets to me and I end up gulping.

Loudly.

Really loud, in the complete silence of the otherwise asleep apartment. 

There’s about five seconds of silence.

And then Katniss laughs. 

Apparently that was funny, my nerves. 

I risk looking up, and she’s smiling wide, but also trying to police it and keep from laughing, so the nasally sound of repressed laughter leaks out.

Of course, seeing her like that makes me smile. And breathe easier in relief.  We stare at each other, and it feels really, really nice. Katniss Everdeen is laughing with me, even though she just saw a picture I drew of her sitting naked, braid reaching all the way down to the very lovingly drawn cleft of her--

“So what are you drawing now?”

I clear my throat. _Down, Peeta._

I tell her it’s nothing, but my mind is still trying to get itself around the fact she didn’t have a meltdown over that.

Before I know it, she’s unfolding her legs to get up and a moment later she’s standing over me to see what I’m sketching. 

 

I look up to see her reaction to my replication of her dandelion doodles. It’s a frown. 

Back nudes equal smile and laughter. Dandelions equal frown. I might never figure her out. 

“You said Madge talked to you about those.”

“I did?”

“What’d she say?”

“She said you draw them so my name’s in them. Like this,” I strike lines through the petals that represent the “t”s in each of the dandelions I’ve already sketched, and then take the time to trace a highlight on one of them to show I’ve deciphered exactly how the petals spell “peeta” in cursive.

When I look back up, she’s still got that frown. In response, she grumbles, then goes back to sit on her side of the couch. She takes her book back up as a way to avoid me.

“I like it,” I mutter. Her eyes lift up just enough from behind her book to meet mine and so I add, “In case it makes a difference.”  

She considers me for a few extra seconds before raising the book between us as a total shield.

“Draw a Buttercup for Prim or something.” 

______

My brother emerges from his bedroom just before five in the morning. Katniss fell asleep long ago while reading, but I’ve managed to stay awake-- I think I have, anyway-- between drawing and brewing myself a cup of black tea. At this time of morning, it’s still dark out, but it’s late enough in the year that there’s a line of grey in the far horizon visible out the living room window.

He shuffles down the hallway towards us, and I search his expression as he enters near enough to the cast of the lamp behind me. I’m uneasy; my vague, patchy memory still has me thinking I attacked him the last time I saw him, for some reason that I can’t figure out… 

I don’t know where we stand.

But for his part, he acts like nothing happened, letting loose a wide stretch, a too-loud yawn, and by the time his racket stirs Katniss awake, he’s also absent-mindedly scratching his balls. 

Classy. 

Katniss is more concerned about the fact she drifted off than my brother’s lack of manners. The book slips off her chest and onto the floor as she sits bolt upright.

“Peeta! Did you fall asleep? Why didn’t you wake me?” She sounds almost panicked. I either wasn’t really with it enough to register, or else I just don’t remember, what the doctor must have said yesterday, but I think maybe she’s taking her concern a little too far. I’m really tired, and my brain feels full of cotton the heft of bricks, but I’m definitely feeling better.

“I’m fine, Katniss. I’ve managed to stay awake.” It helped to have her as a model.  In the several hours she’s been snoozing, I’ve sketched a quick Buttercup for Prim, like she’d asked, but also a scene from being under the stars with her, and one very, very detailed one of her expression in sleep as I’ve been watching her. 

My brother takes a look at that one, because I’m in the middle of coloring it, and gives an appreciative nod. 

“Looks like you did him a favor,” he chuckles. “I think he likes your lips a lot.” 

“Hey,” I protest, pulling my sketch book to the side so he can’t look at it more.

He pushes my shoulder in a brotherly way before heading back down the hall. “I’ll be out of the shower in ten, then you can come down and help me prep.

Katniss protests me being put to work, but we don’t know when the doctor is coming, and when I point out that activity will make it easier for me to stay awake, she gives in. But instead of going back to sleep like I encourage, she follows us down and takes up residence on a half-stack of flour bags.

I’ve got a little vertigo from the lack of sleep, and move slowly, but together he and I work our way through the prep I’d normally be doing myself.  

At one point, he checks over his shoulder for Katniss. I follow his eyes. She’s pulled my jacket off its hook, and with her knees up against her chest, she’s zipped almost her entire body up inside my coat so that the only thing visible is her socks and her head, which is being supported by the wall. There’s little huffs of a semi-snore. She’s asleep. 

It’s cute. 

My brother catches my smile, and laughs quietly enough that it won’t risk waking her.

But then he sidesteps my way, pulling the ball of dough he’d kneading along with him so he can stand close enough to talk in a low voice.

“Seriously, how’re you doing, Peet?”

I shrug, working my own ball of dough. If he means physically, I guess I’m alive, and my headache is subsiding some. If he means something else, well… I’m pretty sure that’s the same rolling pin my mom hit me with that’s still sitting over on the far counter. So pretty much, I’m feeling a lot: Anger. Shame. Hurt. Depression. It’s all there.

“I’m fine.”

“Wow, though,” he makes a quiet whistle, lacking the nuance to realize I was lying. “Katniss. Man, I’ve never seen anything like that.”

I look sideways, my hands stilling on the dough.  He doesn’t say more, so I prod. 

“Like what?”

He raises his eyebrows like I’m asking a stupid question. 

“Kid brother, like _that_.”  When I don’t react, he squints. “Do you even remember yesterday?”

Was all of this just yesterday? It feels like I’ve been in a tunnel for at least a week.

I shake my head. “Not much of it. I remember mom being mad. Nothing new. I think I got into a fight with you,” I say, glossing over that and hurrying directly into, “Katniss’ hand is bandaged. Dad said she got in between me and mom, but I don’t really remember, and Katniss either didn’t want to talk about it, or maybe she did tell me but just got tired of me forgetting.” 

He gives me a look like I’m the caboose and he feels sorry for me. 

“Tell me what happened?”

He looks back to the dough and starts to knead, but I can tell he’s thinking. I should be kneading too, but instead my fingers grip into the sponge while I wait.

“You were here, working, then something got going inside your head and you blew out of here without saying why. It was about Katniss, obviously. And you were in a bad mood. It put mom off. Then, an hour later you were back, and really upset. You practically tore the screen door off its hinges when you came in.” He stops to take his dough over to one of the waiting, greased pans, covering it to prove before grabbing another lump from the mixer and coming back.

I check over my shoulder again, to make sure Katniss is still out, then sidle the two steps to him so I can make him continue. He points at my dough, already vigorously working his, and so I give it enough half-hearted attention that he’s willing to keep talking.

“Please tell me.”

“You got back with such a racket that mom came out from the front and started reaming into you for walking off.” Not surprising. “I guess maybe you and Katniss had a fight?”

I shrug; I don’t know. The mine memory. Or attic, Katniss had said.

“Well, whatever it was, she must’ve come here after you right on your heels, because out of nowhere she was in the mix yelling at mom to shut up, and of course mom went ballistic. Well, more like maybe she was just being nasty at Katniss, and so _you_ went ballistic. Next thing dad and I know, you and mom were in each other’s faces screaming, spit flying, then there’s this thud. Followed by you going down.”

He stops to peer at my head. Where she hit me is covered by my hair, so it doesn’t keep his attention.  

My eyes travel over to the rolling pin.

“We should throw that away, maybe,” he offers, when he sees me lost in a stare at it.

“And Katniss? Her hand? The blood? Mom?”

“You were out for a good few seconds. Dad got to you, and the rest of us were just… It was just quiet. Dead quiet. But the moment you grunted and started coming to, Katniss grabbed a knife and had mom backed up against the wall faster than you can say ‘stop.’ It was just a mess after that.”

I can’t believe it as he keeps at the kneading like it’s a normal morning’s prep.

“AND?”

“And what,” he shrugs. “It was all screaming and trying to get people to back down until it wasn’t.”

  * “But that’s what I don’t remember!”



“Okay,” he says, pausing to look at me like he’s genuinely trying to sort it all out in his head. “Once you were on your feet, you were just nuts.” He shakes his head, “I don’t know who you were trying to fight, but you weren’t thinking right, and just made everything worse. Katniss…  It looked like Katniss had the blade to mom’s throat and we were trying to yell at her to back off, but I guess she only had it so the back of the knife was on mom, so the blade was actually digging into Katniss’ hand while they were having their moment. Dad eventually talked her down, and we got both of you out the back door right away, but of course mom started off screaming again, and I guess…”

He grimaces. 

“I guess her temper finally got her, because she was screaming like I’ve never heard, and then suddenly it wasn’t a scream as much as a strangled sound and weird movements and then she just collapsed. Doctor said it was a stroke.”

He shakes his head again, and his voice lowers. He looks disturbed.

“Peeta, I actually thought she might kill mom. I actually thought she might do it. I’ve never seen anyone so close to that point in my whole life. Not even mom.”

I clench the dough in frustration, in my impotence, then shove my arms into a tight cross over my chest and turn so I can look at Katniss. My brother turns to look at her, too, though he’s more relaxed, leaning back against the counter for support. She’s so small, balled up inside my jacket. I think back to all the moments I’ve seen her break. The night after her mom died. The cry in the supply closet. The way she was so fragile when she shared the contents of that little box of childhood memories with me in the attic. 

“What did she say,” I whisper to him. 

“When?”

“To mom. When she had the knife.”

“She said, if mom ever touched you again, she’d kill her even if it meant hanging.”

I tuck my chin down, frustrated at Katniss for putting herself in danger over me. Anything could have happened. Mom could’ve attacked her, taken that knife and used it on _her_. If she hadn’t had the stroke, she could’ve-- probably would’ve-- called the Peacekeepers and accused _her_ of assault with a deadly weapon and had her thrown in jail, if not worse. 

I’m furious at myself that Katniss was the one protecting _me_ , and not the other way around.

“Peeta,” my brother waits until I turn to look at him, “I think she meant it. You two keep having these lovers’ ups and downs, but I’m telling you, that girl was ready to die for you.”

The sound of my agony comes out in a strangled groan, emotion choking me at my throat. It’s not relief, but pain.

I don’t get to drown in it, not even for a second, because at that exact instant, dad calls out a “Morning,” startling me as he emerges from the door at the bottom of the stairs.  The noise stirs Katniss awake, and so I school myself, wiping my arm quickly across my eyes.

Dad looks around at all three of us to survey how we’re doing. 

My brother turns back to kneading, but Katniss wiggles one of her hands out up through the collar of my jacket so she can zip herself free, so my dad goes over to her first. As soon as she’s had a stretch and come more fully awake, dad’s got her bandaged hand laying in his open palm, asking her how it’s doing. Katniss mumbles that it’s fine. Dad hesitates, but there’s nothing he can really do, so he leaves her and comes over to me. And without asking, he walks into my space and tilts my head so he can look more closely at the spot where I was hit.

“How’re you feeling?”

I shrug. Again, what could I possibly say to cover everything I might be feeling, when I don’t even know what it all is myself. 

“How bad’s the headache,” he pushes.  

“Better.”

“Feel sick still?”

“No, I’m good.” 

“Dizzy?” 

“ _I’m good_ ,” I grit my teeth and say. Really, I’m getting agitated as hell, and even though I realize it might be misplaced or unreasonable, I feel like I can’t help it, so I pull my head away from his touch. 

“Okay, okay,” he says. But he doesn’t step away, just stares at me before pulling me into a hug that I manage to eventually ease into. “Don’t ever do that again,” he says, clapping me on the back.

“Do what? Get mom mad?”

“No,” he holds me at arms’ length so he can look at me to make his point, “get yourself hurt like that.”

Once Katniss is on her feet and moving around, and dad tells us both to go upstairs and eat breakfast. I am actually hungry. Katniss insists she’s not, but her stomach makes enough noise to disagree, so we trudge upstairs together and eat a wordless meal of toasted, stale bread smeared with butter. It’s not too long, though, before we hear voices downstairs, and dad appears at the top of the steps with Doctor Sawbowh.

Katniss practically jumps out of her chair, suddenly wide awake and alive. It startles me, and I feel lost at first because I’m not sure what I’ve missed, but eventually I realize she’s anxious for him to give me a clean bill of health. 

It must be something he sees a lot, because while I’m stunned by the openness of her intensity, he actually pats her on the arm and smiles before telling her I look better already and to have a seat. He’s in the middle of blinding me with a penlight while he examines my eyes when I hear Prim come out from my parents’ room and say hello to Katniss, and ask her how her hand is.  Katniss again says she’s fine, but once the penlight is gone, I can tell-- despite the blinding spots that float in my vision-- that Katniss is still focused on the doctor and what he’s doing with me. My head gets tilted by cold, firm hands, my hair parted, the lump there proded. I wince. It hurts. He asks questions. Who am I. Where am I. When is it. How’s my stomach. 

Mostly, I tell him, I just really want to go to sleep.  

What he doesn’t ask much about is my memory, so I ask him. He’s less concerned with its patchy nature than I am, and tells me it’s normal. He tells me I may never recover those minutes or hours, but that doesn’t mean much. He thinks I need a good rest, but that I shouldn’t need more medical care.

But while I’m happy to be passive and not ask for more ways something might still be wrong with me, Katniss is insistent on specifics. What are the possible side effects she needs to watch for. Could there be brain damage. How would she know. Could I still get brain swelling. What does she do if I have a seizure. What if--

The doctor cuts her off with another, stronger assurance that in his medical opinion, I’ll be okay, and then stops her further protest with a firm order for her to sit down and present her hand. 

She obeys, and he’s first person she doesn’t mutter an ‘I’m fine’ at. And though I said I wasn’t really feeling sick, once he’s seated next to her and unwrapping the wadding of bandages, that starts to change. The closer he gets to the base layer, the larger the blood stain gets. My chair scrapes loudly on the floor as I stand up, and I rest my palms on the table to keep me stable while I lean over to see.  Both my dad and Prim are crowded around, too, enough that the doctor tells them both to take a step back.

The cut is sickening. He peels the final layer off slowly, but it’s so deep, and the skin so red and angry, that there’s actually sound as it comes slowly loose from the dried blood, stitches, and, I’m not sure if it’s pus or salve of some sort, but it’s a little green and it’s leaking out from the wound.

Prim gasps, clutching Katniss’s shoulder. Dad swallows and crosses his arms, shuffling his feet. I almost fall over.

Katniss’ hand is small, so much smaller than mine. The cut might not be so bad on a hand like mine, but on her, the two inches of it stretches from past the center of her palm not to the bottom heel of her hand, but what looks like through it. That has to be an illusion, because half of her hand would be hanging loose if that were the case, so maybe it’s the way the stitches otherwise claw their way from her palm down and around to the front of her hand that make it look worse than it is. 

But whatever, it’s horrific. 

And I really might vomit. 

And when I look up to Prim as a barometer of how bad or good it might really be, both her hands are clamped over her mouth and she’s pale as a ghost. My dad looks pale, too. I notice Katniss is refusing to look at it at all, instead, staring off into space.

The doctor’s face is tight as he pulls on pair of protective gloves and begins probing the area. Katniss can’t help wincing at each exploratory push.

“How’s the pain level been,” he asks, looking up at her from over his spectacles.

Katniss shakes her head. “Okay. I didn’t feel anything last night unless it got bumped.”

“And now?”

She sniffs, but stays stoic. “It’s fine.”

The doctor doesn’t look fooled. “Well, by that, I take it that it’s starting to hurt, but it’s still mild yet.”

Her non-answer is agreement.

“That’s the numbing salve wearing off, then.”  She swallows, and I can’t help the feeling that despite her calm, inside she’s anxious about what that will mean in a few hours.  He spends more time looking at her wound than he did on me by at least three times over, and then has a still-white Prim assist him with washing the dried blood away with a sterile solution and injecting the area with a new dose of the green, oozy medicine. He takes his time showing both her and Katniss the exact way he wants the bandages wrapped every time they’re changed, at least twice a day, so as to keep the stitches in place and as little pull on the muscles as possible. I can see Katniss’ eyes wet with unshed tears, but she’s still holding on to not showing pain.

When he’s done, he stands up and stares at her for a few moments.

“That medication should last you for another twenty-four hours, but then it’s going to get very painful, I’m afraid. You were lucky. The slice is clean, and the angle of the cut managed to miss the ligament. When you… fell… or however you decide to say it happened, you must’ve had a pretty tight fist, because the abductor was seized up enough that it protected the tendon. It helped that you’d built that muscle up: Most young ladies’ hands aren’t so strong.”

She doesn’t say anything, so he pulls a bottle of pills out, antibiotics, then instructs her and Prim and me on how and when Katniss needs to take them. 

She nods, but still without emotion.

“Regardless of how much it hurts, you need to change those bandages like I said. You need to clean the wound. If it starts to feel hot, or if you get a fever, or if it starts hurting with a pain that feels something different than what a bruise feels like, you need to come see me. And, Ms. Everdeen...”  Katniss looks up, and she’s working hard to keep those tears in.

He hits her with it: 

“Not to say that you engage in illegal activities, but… No hunting. I think with time and care, you’ll get the normal use of those last two fingers again, but it’s going to be a long road, and take lot of intentional behavior to make sure you’re not using that muscle while the fibers grow back together. If you try to hurry it, you’ll do more damage. And if you go getting bacteria from wild animals into it, or from the soil, you’re talking about an infection that could lead to amputation.” He waits a second, because she just blinks, then puts a hand on her shoulder. “I need to hear that you understand me.”

There’s a delay, and then a quiet, “Okay.”

I see a single tear finally run down her cheek, but otherwise, she doesn’t respond more.

Satisfied, he looks to my dad, who nods and leads him off to where my mom is. 

“Katniss,” Prim starts, but I don’t think any of us can articulate what we feel about this, and nothing else follows except for Prim trying not to cry.

Katniss remains distant, but after half a minute seems to come back and finally notice that both Prim and I are staring at her.

“Hey, I’m fine,” she says. “I’ll be fine.” She’s doing a job so good at smiling and seeming unaffected it makes me almost pound my fist into the table.

I’m so _fucking_ helpless.

_I_ let that happen. 

I let that happen _to her_.

This is my fault.

I’m a fucking failure on all levels. I can’t stand up to my mother. I can’t stand up for myself. I can’t protect Katniss from the hell-hole that is my life. 

In a burst of anger that surprises even me, I grab my chair by its back and hurl it sideways into the nearby kitchen cabinets, only barely managing to keep from screaming out a thousand terrible things. And of course-- _of course_ \-- everyone comes running. My brother almost trips as he races up the stairs, probably thinking there’s another disaster. My dad and the doctor almost knock each other over pushing back into the kitchen to see what’s wrong. There’s a strangled sort of moan that follows from the bedroom from my mom, followed by frustrated noises I imagine are her in her state demanding to know what’s happening.

And Prim, well, she just holds herself and steps back until she bumps into my dad before finally sobbing.

Katniss is the only one who seems unaffected. She’s staring at me, but there’s a sort of blankness still behind her eyes that tells me she must still be in shock, so the fact she isn’t reacting only serves to remind me how messed up everything is, and my part in it.

I don’t even feel like apologizing, I’m past caring, but I know people won’t get along on their merry way unless I convince them I’m ‘fine’ just like Katniss is ‘fine,’ so I mutter an, “I’m sorry.”

No one believes me, but it’s not like there’s something to do about it.  My dad squeezes Prim’s arms and then whispers at her to go into the bedroom where my mom is, then he nods my brother back downstairs. 

“Is it okay for him to get some sleep now,” he asks the doctor, really sending a message to me.

“It would be good for him,” he says. Then his eyes fall on Katniss. “For both of them. I’ll write an excused absence slip for them for the next two days of school; they need as much rest as they can get.”

My dad nods, and while the doctor goes in to see my mom and Prim, he meets my eyes and commiserates in some of my sadness. I’ll bet he feels the same sense of responsibility I do.

“Come on, love,” he says, coming over to Katniss and wrapping his arm around her and encouraging her up. She goes as he leads towards the hall, and he adds a “You, too,” in my direction. He opens the door to my room, holding it above her head and ushering her in under his arm like I’d seen him do that once when she was leaving his office, then he waits for me to follow. 

“Get some sleep,” he says to me as I walk past him. But then he stops me with a hand on my arm, gripping me hard, tight, like iron, and I know it’ll leave a bruise. In his eyes is every ounce of self-loathing I’ve ever seen in the mirror and felt when looking at myself.  He looks like maybe he wants to say he’s sorry, but I shake my head. 

I don’t want to hear it. 

We’re both sorry. We’re both at fault.

He manages a breaking, “I love you, son,” before squeezing my shoulders and stepping out, pulling the door behind him and shutting Katniss and I in together.

The morning light is alive and strong now, streaming through the window, coloring the dust in the air. Katniss is at the far side of the room, inching her way through an examination of things on my dresser, running the fingers from her unbandaged hand over them as she moves, as though my comb, a pencil, or a stack of books are fascinating.  Once she makes the circuit, we’re left standing in the center of my bedroom, facing each other. 

“We should sleep,” she says. Her voice is raspy. 

Of course there’s only my one, twin-sized bed. I tell her she should take it and I’ll go sleep on the couch, but she shakes her head, so I climb onto it, not bothering to get under the covers. I’m expecting her to leave and take the couch herself, or who knows, maybe she’s ready to go back to their house, but as soon as I’m laying down, she lays down next to me and curls up into my side. When I offer my arm, she settles in against me, her bandaged hand a big wad of white resting on my chest. I’m afraid to touch it, so instead, I lay my hand on her forearm and rub my thumb gently back and forth on her wrist.

She’s asleep within seconds.

_____________________

I’m not sure what time it is. Waking up feels disorientating and unpleasant. Outside the window, there’s not much light, and there’s a smell of something savory being cooked in the kitchen, so maybe it’s heading into evening. Katniss is still tucked in next to me, but the door’s wide open and there’s a blanket that’s been spread out over us. Voices come from somewhere down the hall.

“It’s only been twenty-four hours. The next two days will tell us more.” The voice, Doctor Sawbowh, adds, “You’re lucky to have Miss Everdeen here; she’s a good nurse. If her sister can spare her, it would be helpful to both of you if she could stay close by for a couple of days.”

“And the kids?”

There’s a pause, like the doctor is considering.

“Are they staying the night again?”

“Should they?”

“It wouldn’t hurt. There again, the younger Ms. Everdeen is really quite an asset to have watching. Though, I’m less worried about their injuries for the next day or two as I am about other things. The trauma of… whatever happened… is as much a concern. People don’t think clearly when they’re in shock. At least one of them needs to be alert enough to make sure her wound gets properly rebandaged and that she keeps on time with her medications. At any rate, someone should check up on them in the morning if they insist on going.”

“Thank you, doctor.” I hear the man take a step, but then my dad asks him to wait.  There’s silence, and then, “When my wife and I were first…together. She didn’t want children right away. She got treatment for fertility.”

“Contraception.”

“That’s right. Anyway, it was a shot that lasted for a year. She did that for a few years in a row. I think these two… I don’t think it’s a secret how much Katniss has had to be the main provider and half a parent to Prim since her dad died. And I doubt it’s also a secret that she married my son because her mom’s health forced the situation. But the two of them… They do genuinely care for each other. And they have for a long time, even though they’ve both been shy about it for their own reasons. But I’m a lot older than them, and experience tells me the fear of accidentally adding a baby into the mix is getting in the way of them being able to be open with each and bond the way they need to.”

Katniss’ entire body tenses next to me, punctuated by a near-silent gasp. I’d assumed she was still asleep, but clearly she’s hearing every syllable I am. While the doctor actually chuckles at what my dad is implying, I’m mortified. My face starts burning so bad it’s itching all the way down my neck, and I half expect Katniss to leap from the bed and flee out the window.

But neither of us moves as the conversation in the hall ignorantly continues.

“And so you’d like me to prescribe a similar shot for your daughter-in-law?”

“Does the Capitol still allow them?”

“It’s money, of course they allow it.”

“How much?”

“The once-per-annual injection you’re talking about is forty credits.”

I feel my eyes nearly pop from my skull.  Dad said I’m getting a salary come summer, but forty credits! That’s two months wages for what the bakery will be paying me!

My dad gives a low whistle. “I remember it was costly, but I don’t remember it being that high.”

“I’m guessing that was over twenty years ago, Mr. Mellark.”

My dad grunts at the friendly jab, but then sighs. “If Katniss… happens to stop by your office sometime in the next month or two, or even over the summer... I know I’ll paying down the bill for all your services here over the rest of the year, but I’d consider it a favor if you’d be willing to tag that fee onto this. It’s be my wedding present to them.”

“Of course.”

“I appreciate all your help.”

The conversation seems to be over, as footsteps fade off down the hall.  

I’m suddenly painfully aware that Katniss is still next to me, still tucked into my side, and that she isn’t saying a word. 

A knock on the wall makes me jump.

“Hey, you two, wake up. Dinner’s almost ready.”


	8. Chapter 22

A/N: Find links to all previous 21 chapters [ HERE](https://dandeliononfire.tumblr.com/myff) .

I think there’s four (maybe five depending on how I break the rest of the events up) chapters left, plus an Epilogue. We’re getting there!

Thanks to @jroseley for being a beta.

 

No one seems to notice the dynamic of how we sit, except for me. My dad takes his usual chair at one end of the table, then Prim immediately sits down in the chair closest to him. My brother sits next to her, also without pausing to think about it despite the fact it’s on the opposite side of the table from where he normally sits.  I hesitate, waiting for Katniss to pick, but even though there’s a slight turn in her positioning that makes me think she wants to sit in the chair across from Prim, she’s clearly waiting for me to choose what I want first. No one seems to notice us still standing; dad is already dishing an oven-roasted sausage onto Prim’s plate, and my brother is supplementing that by spooning on some boiled potatoes.

I pull out the chair I think Katniss wants, and after managing a tired look, she says “Thank you,” then scoots in and lets me help her maneuver the chair into place under her.  My dad has dished her a sausage by the time I take my own seat next to her.

It smells good. We eat plenty enough to sustain us working all day, with energy left over for things like wrestling, but as I’ve explained to Katniss, it’s not usually particularly rich fare. Sunday supper is where we splurge, and the fat, heavily seasoned sausages we’re having tonight is my dad’s favorite.

I realize how our situation has changed when the sausage platter is empty, but dad’s plate is filled only with potatoes and some salad greens.  Mom probably bought them from the butcher’s yesterday, sometime when she was able to break away from the shop. Yesterday, there were four mouths to feed. Tonight, there’s five.

Six, with mother. But can she eat? No one’s told me yet.

“Here, dad,” I stand to offer over my plate. “I’m not that hungry.”

“He can have mine,” Katniss says.

“You need to eat,” I tell her. I start to reach my plate past her, but Katniss sticks her arm up, ball-of-gauze and everything, and pushes my plate back towards me.

“So do you. And I’m really not hungry.”  With finality, she inches her plate over to my dad so he’ll get the point.

“The _two of you_ need to eat,” dad overrules us both. He points at her plate with his fork, his quiet finality stronger than hers, “So eat.”

Even though she takes her plate back, it’s clear it really bothers Katniss that my dad isn’t eating any of the sausage, not in an angry sort of way, but in a sad one. An awkward pause develops and no one actually starts eating until my brother cuts his in half, stands up, leans forward over the table and lets the big chunk plop off onto dad’s plate.

“There, we’ve compromised, now we can all eat,” he says triumphantly as he sits back down and grabs both fork and knife like he’s ready to feast. I blink at the casualness he’s just taken with the situation, but he shrugs. “What, she was making it weird.” To Katniss, with a salting of what feels like forced lightness, he reaffirms, “Kat, you were making it weird.”

Then he shoves a huge chunk of potato in his mouth, mashes it and swallows in one huge gulp.

“And anyway, I’m done letting mom infect every breath we take. It’s done. I’m done. And Peeta, you’re done.” My brother points his knife at me, intense, “You take care of them,” he waves it between Katniss and Prim, “dad takes care of you three,” he makes a triangle movement, and then finally circles it around in the air several times, “and I take care of all of you. Mom lives or dies, I’m done giving a damn.” My dad tries to rebuke him over that, but he rolls on without stopping, “We’re starting this family over, right now.” He draws in a breath and forces himself to relax a little. “Katniss, eat please.”

Prim gives my brother a sad smile of thanks, which he returns.

Katniss’ wrapped hand makes it impossible for her to slice the meat up, so I do it for her, and dinner finishes in silence.

“Prim’s agreed to stay here the next couple of nights to help with mom,” dad says once we’re cleaning up and I’m at the sink starting on dishes. “She needs some clothes and her books so she can go from here to school in the morning.” To my brother he says, “You go with her.”

“I can go by myself,” Prim says.

But my dad shakes his head. “No. It’s already getting dark. Enough’s happened the last twenty-four hours; I’m not taking chances with you walking back alone.”

“I don’t mind going,” my brother reassures everyone, and that same confidence he had at dinner settles the matter and we go back to clearing.

A few moments later, Katniss is beside me at the sink, slipping her plate into the water where my hands are busy at work. She’s standing close enough to whisper so the others won’t overhear.

“I’m going to go with them and stay. The house shouldn’t be empty a second night.”

I glance sideways at her. She’s still visibly subdued, eyes a little vacant. It’s the first time it’s occurred to me I had no idea what tonight’s logistics were supposed to look like.

I don’t want to split up.

“I’m going with you, then.”

I’m surprised when she doesn’t argue, but closes her eyes and releases a breath instead. 

 

“Thank you,” she says, and then goes back to the table for another dirty dish.

 

____________

Back at their house Prim changes Katniss’ bandage, making me watch so I’ll know how to help her in the morning. Katniss grimaces, and releases a few grunts as Prim works, but otherwise stays quiet. Once she’s done, my brother tells Prim they should get back and leave us to settle in and rest. She gives Katniss a hug, tells her she loves her, gives me a brief hug too, then follows him to the door. And then they’re gone, Katniss and I left standing in the middle of the room, alone in a way that  feels different.

She looks not just exhausted, but pale from the bandage ordeal.

“I guess…”  I’m not sure what we do here. “I guess call it an early night? You can take the bathroom first, if you want.”

 

Neither of us moves.

She searches my eyes for a long time.

“Thank you for coming back here with me.”

I’m trying to decide how much meaning to read into that when she steps into me, arms slipping around me, forehead pressed against my shoulder.  

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, but I’m not sure what for, and then she abruptly takes me up on the offer of first dibs for the bathroom.

I make a short retreat to the bedroom to undress. My pajamas are back at the bakery, so it’s a quick strip down to boxers and t-shirt for the night, and the cat hops inside almost as soon as I open the window. But getting Katniss ready for bed turns out to be a much more involved process, difficult enough that eventually even Buttercup starts meowing at how long it takes. First, she can’t get the sleeve of her henley over her bandage. I have to cut it for her. Then, her sleeping gown has a button cuff, which I have to undo for her. But of course, that cloth has no stretch, and her hand gets wedged into the sleeve partway; she tears up in pain as we work together to free it. She finally settles for putting on a t-shirt of mine that’s still left in the dresser, but it hangs off her like a curtain. And since the girls sleep in gowns, it takes her time to figure out what to wear as bottoms. I frankly don’t care if she just wears her underwear, we’ll be in separate rooms anyway, but she’s determined.  In the end, she gives up and puts on a clean pair of trousers.

By the time we’re done, we’re both a little agitated and cranky.

But right after Katniss disappears into the bathroom, there’s clatter and cursing.

I push the door open to find Katniss on her knees, picking things up off the floor. She’d caught them, I think, with her bandage and knocked them off the vanity.

I kneel on the floor next to her in the small space.

“No!” she snaps, but I ignore her and help anyway. Once I get her back on her feet, I take her hairbrush, stand behind her, and lock eyes with her glare in the mirror until she gives in with a nod.

Her eyes stay screwed shut the entire time I brush her hair, an occasional tear running down her cheek. I’m being gentle, so I think it’s emotion and not that I’m doing something wrong. But she only opens them again once I start forming her braid.

The expression looking back at me in the mirror is softer, expended.

We brush our teeth. This time, I have to borrow her toothbrush.

And then, finally, finally, finally, it’s time for actual bed.

I expect her to stay behind in her and Prim’s bed once we blow the lamps out, but instead, she follows me into the bedroom and curls in close like she had that morning. The arm with the bandaged hand lays across my chest.

An hour passes, and even though we haven’t really moved, I can tell neither of us are sleeping.

Something’s been weighing on me all day.

“I’m sorry about my dad earlier, with the doctor and them talking about… about…” My cheeks heat. “About  _ that _ . I didn’t have anything to do with it, I just want you to know.”

She sighs. “I know.”

“My dad shouldn’t have done that, Katniss. I’m sorry.”

“He’s fine, Peeta.”

She’s still for a few moments, then her arm pulls us closer and I cooperate as she shifts so that my arm is curled around her shoulders.

“I like your dad,” her voice is small. I give her a squeeze and rub my palm slowly up and down her arm. She seems to like that, burrowing in a little closer to me and the tension I feel in her body eases. “I can tell he wants to hug me, sometimes. I always manage to avoid it, mostly because I don’t really know how to receive it.”

“He cares about you a lot.”

“He reminds me what it was like to have my dad. It makes me hurt.”

“Like the wound is fresh?”

“Yeah.”

We don’t say anything else.

_______________

I wake to the sound of something moving in the other room.  It’s Katniss, I assume, because she isn’t in bed next to me. It’s dark except for a faint glow coming in from the living room, which turns out to be from a lone candle she has sitting on the arm of the armchair beside her. She’s using it to light a frantic-looking search through the mess of jars in Prim’s old medicine chest.

“Katniss?”  

 

I come over, taking the candle so it won’t tip over, and hold it so she has better light. Her right arm is pinched up between her upper thighs and her stomach as she rocks a little, and she doesn’t look up until she finds a glass vial to hold up in the light so she can read the writing on the label. Her face is pinched, eyes wild, and there’s a glisten of sweat on her forehead.  She swears as she puts the bottle back into the pile and then quickly finds another. This one seems to be what she wants, and she’s up like a shot and I’m stomping heavily behind her into the kitchen in my still sleep-addled state.

“What’s wrong?”  I set the candle on the counter and feel her forehead, worried about fever, but it’s actually cold and clammy under that perspiration. Her hair feels soaked.

She shakes her head away from my touch, grunts and pulls a mug from a hook, practically slamming it down on the counter.

“Water,” she orders.

She tries to hold the vial to her chest tightly enough with her right arm that she can use her left hand to uncork it, but it doesn’t work because the bottle is too small for her to get a good grip around. As soon as I’ve filled the mug with water, I take the vial of tincture and read it.

_ Willow bark. Pain reliever. One teaspoon every six hours. _

“ _ Please _ ,” Katniss pleads, her voice a whine and she’s literally not able to stand still. She’s cradling her bandaged hand now.

I pull out the cork and riffle through the drawer in the candlelight to find a teaspoon to measure. She assures me it’s okay to put in two spoonfuls, because that batch had brewed weak.  I hesitate, but in the end I think she’s telling the truth, and it goes into the mug with the water, which she immediately chugs.

And then she’s yanking open a cupboard I’ve never seen anything in except for pans, reaching far into it the back of it and coming out with a glass canning jar for me to open next. I do, and the strong smell of alcohol assaults me. I make a face, but she takes it from me and after bracing herself, takes several gulps of it before managing a controlled fit of coughing.

I pry it out of her hands just as she’s about to take another go at it. She tries to snatch it back, but I twist and hold it out of her reach.

“You’ll make yourself sick, Katniss!”

“I don’t care,” she says, almost in tears.

She’ll care if she adds an upset stomach to her other woes. She needs something on her stomach with that liquor, but there’s no bread because I haven’t been here, and there’s no game. I’ve only been gone two days and already there’s no fresh provisions coming in. My jaw hurts and I realize I’m grinding my teeth.

They need the bakery, and they need what it can provide. Period. 

I fall back to the cabinet where the canned goods are, what there are of them. It’s just low-calorie value vegetables that are left, and while cold, jarred vegetables aren’t exactly appealing middle-of-the-night food, it’s what we have.  I find a jar of stewed carrots and force her to eat half, before screwing the lid back on and putting it out on the front porch to stay cool in the night now that we’ve opened it.

“Any better?”

She shrugs, and then leans into me, pressing her face into my shoulder. My arms go around her.

“Anything I can do?”

She starts shaking a little in what has to be the start of finally crying.

“What can I do, Katniss? Tell me what I can do.”

“Anything,” she says horsley into my shirt. “Distract me.”

 

I sway us a little, back and forth, back and forth, and run my hands up and down her back continuously in what I hope is comfort. She doesn’t object, so it must be okay. Eventually, she stops shaking and steps back to scan around into the dimness of the house for something to do, that pain-driven agitation still writhing under her skin. 

“Help me re-organize the medicine.”

“You betcha.”

I light a lamp rather than labor under the lumens of a candle, and we sit side-by-side on the floor in front of the two chests, three hands working together, the arm of her wounded one held unmoving against her stomach. Buttercup even decides to join us, purring against me for a few minutes before bedding himself for the night in the nearby armchair. We take our time, transferring and reorganizing, with her telling me what each vial or jar is and is for, how she thinks its contents are made, and answering as many of my questions as she can. With each jar or vial, she picks a place for it in the organizational structure of the new chest and I put it where she points. Though, within a quarter of an hour, the alcohol- and probably exhaustion- clearly takes its effect on her: Her cheeks grow flush, she has to think longer, and her sentences grow slurred.

By the time we’re done and we close the lids to both chests, she’s slouching sideways against me.

“Any better?”

All she does is grunt, but at least it must be better, because she’s not sweating, and she looks like she could fall asleep given enough encouragement.

“Ready for bed?”  I stroke her arm with my thumb.

“No. Do tha insteaaah,” she slurs in a murmur. 

I slide the hand up and rub gently on her shoulder, then on her neck, experimenting, “Does that feel okay?”

“Mmmhmm.”

I lean my head forward to look at her; her eyes have drifted closed. I turn a little so I can use both hands and she shifts too, to make it easier for me to rub her back. I pull my hands over her shoulders from front-to-back, dragging down between her shoulder blades with my thumbs before stroking upwards. A drawn-out groan makes her back vibrate under my palms a little like Buttercup’s purring and I keep going.

Until her back and shoulder jerk a few times because, suddenly, she’s crying again.  

I turn her and pull her into me. She’s apologizing for crying. Swearing under her breath. Offering sentence fragments that don’t make sense to me, and none of which have to do with pain. I rock gently until the sniffing finally ends and I push her back enough I can get a good look at her.

“You alright?”

She shrugs but won’t lift her eyes. She looks miserable.

“Things’ll be okay,” I say, and somehow seeing her hurting so badly makes me even more determined to make sure it won’t end up a lie. “Here,” I get up and guide her the few steps over to the bed she normally shares with Prim. I tell her to sit, and then go grab the pillows from the bedroom and line them against the wall-side of the mattress so she can angle herself to collapse down against them and keep her arm elevated at the same time. I lie behind her, leaving space between us, and resume the slow backrub.

She’s quiet under the attention, and after several minutes I stop, my eyes wanting to close. 

“Please doooon stop.” Her sudden whisper snatches me from almost-sleep. 

 

So I don’t. I start up again and she adjusts herself to sag more deeply into the nest of pillows.

“Unerashur,” she adds, her voice now muffled as well as slurring.

“What?”

“Unerashur.”

I pat her arm. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to interpret that for me.”

“Undertheshirt,” she lifts her face clear of the nest, trying hard to speak more clearly but still running the words together in a string. 

Three seconds is too long for liquored, tired Katniss to wait for a response, apparently, because while her head falls forward again and her voice is once more muffled by pillows, her louder, begging and now whiny, “ _ Unerashur _ ,” returns. 

 

It carries enough little-girl-pouting to make me smile.

She even wiggles her back to make her point.

“Hanhurs,” she adds, her tone clearly playing the sympathy card rather than explaining. And a beat later there’s a rummy-sounding snort and giggle into her pillow, as though even she knows she’s hamming a bit too much.

“You’re drunk,” I say, and chuckle at her.  Because, well, it’s cute. This is cute. 

 

She’s cute. 

She lifts her head up and a gives a very confident, “Am not,” before her head almost immediately falls back into the pillows with zero grace. 

 

“Mumf. Nowrubbbbb breadboy.”

Well, I’ll be.

I laugh. A real, deep laugh from the belly. Because, when has Katniss Everdeen ever gotten jokingly petulant in an attempt to get my hands on her?

I can resist the tease.

 

“Katniss Everdeen, demanding I put my hand up her shirt. No one would believe me.”

“Ownee on bak, so sokay,” she defends her innocence.   “Tah inieon anh... I keelu.” 

 

_ Tell anyone and I’ll kill you _ , maybe?

There’s another- though apparently random- snort of laughter into her pillow.

“To hear is to obey,” I mock, which gets me a giggle.

I slip one hand under the t-shirt, spread my fingers over her shoulder blade, dig my palm into her back and push my hand up, bringing my fingers closed in a gentle clinch around the side of her neck before repeating.

The groan she releases doesn’t sound exactly innocent.

I think Katniss Everdeen is taking advantage of my generous nature.

Hallelujah.

____________________

  
  


My mind is wet cotton as I wake up. My head aches, low and throbbing, and my eyes squint against the morning light even though it’s not direct sun. I feel a stab of worry; daylight means I’ve overslept my shift.  

 

And something else is off.

I’m wrapped around Katniss, who seems to be still asleep.  

“Well, don’t you two look cozy.”  Shuffling shoes and creaking floorboards force me to look around. It’s my brother, standing at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, grin splitting his face.

“What are you doing here?” Reluctantly, I untangle my arms from around Katniss and manage to sit up. I rub at my eyes. Katniss starts to come awake as well, stretching next to me.

 

“Prim wanted to change Kat’s bandage before school, rather than put you through it just yet. Dad told me to come along as the escort.”

 

Sure enough, Prim is in the kitchen, filling water into a pitcher and gathering a bowl and a small towel. 

I ask my brother, a little distracted as I notice Prim’s eyes hesitate at the vial of willow bark and the jar of white liquor still out on the counter, “How’s he going to open with just himself?”

 

“He’ll manage.”

Prim starts setting up at the table. I get myself to where I can sit on the edge of the bed, and soon Katniss is sitting next to me. I half expect her to have some negative reaction to the position we just woke up in, especially with Prim and my brother right there, but while she looks a little embarrassed, and still tired, there’s no hint of irritation. After she gives a yawn and another stretch- I catch my brother’s eyes automatically drift down to  _ that  _ part of her shirt and I clear my throat loudly enough he looks away quickly- she gets up and sits with Prim for the nursing session.

“I’ll go back with you and help,” I tell him.

“No,” he says, clearly watching how slow I am to get myself up onto my feet. I’m more sore and stiff today than I was yesterday. “You’re resting today. And tomorrow. Prim and I walked fast; I’ll get her to school and then get back as fast as I can. We’ll manage for a day or two without you.”  

I shuffle over to watch the bandage change. I feel self-conscious in my boxers in front of Prim- There’s only one button in that fly and I don’t want a fabric gaping incident to leave us all scarred for life- so I sit down and scoot my chair in quickly.

“You look tired,” Katniss whispers to Prim with a groggy morning-rasp. She leans forward and brushes her left hand over her sister’s forehead even while Prim is already undoing the bandage on her right.  “How was your night last night? Did you sleep?” 

“I’m fine.”

As she gets further to the end of the gauze, even though she tries to be gentle, Katniss winces and bites down in the inside of her bottom lip for a few seconds.

“How much did you sleep?” Katniss insists on knowing.

“I slept.”

 

“How much?”

 

“Enough.” Prim isn’t being curt with her short answers: Her face is pale, under her eyes is puffy, and her shoulders are slouched. She’s just genuinely tired like the rest of us. 

“Bad dreams?”

Prim shakes her head. “Didn’t dream.”

“Maybe you should sleep here tonight.”

Prim gives Katniss a ‘don’t-big-sister-me’ look and manages a micro-flash of irritation to go with it. 

 

“I’m fine over there for a few nights. They need me.”  

 

But then she sighs, part exasperated, but also definitely part defeated. 

 

“Yes, okay. Of course I’m tired. But we’re all tired. And I’ll be fine. I don’t want you worrying about me right now. For once just let me be the one worrying.”

Before Katniss can argue, Prim starts pressing gently around the now-exposed stitches, drawing all of Katniss’ attention to that spot in an instant. Once she’s satisfied there’s no puss, she pulls her sister’s hand over the bowl and pours water over it, stopping to wipe it clean with one half of the towel, then pouring a second wash of water over it before pat-drying the skin and resting Katniss’ arm back on the table.  

 

When she gets up and goes to her medicine chest, she gasps when she finds it empty. But she’s quick enough to immediately open the newer chest. 

 

She looks back at us over her shoulder, once she can look away from it. She looks like she’s on the edge of being emotional, in the same tired way Katniss was for so much of yesterday.

 

“It’s incredible,” she says. “When did you two…”

I shrug. “It was a long night and we needed something to do.”

 

“Which translates into: I made a big mess of things trying to find the willow bark, so we had to fix it,” Katniss corrects.

 

“Thank you,” Prim says, staring down into it with a little bit of awe 

Organized as it is now, it takes her no time to find what she’s looking for.  Once she’s back at the table and the lid is off the little jar, I recognize the pungent stench immediately. It’s what Katniss had put on my neck.  Prim smears a little on to the cut, over the stiches, and then makes quick work of wrapping the hand with fresh gauze.

“Okay, I’ll come back this afternoon and check on you if I can,” she promises Katniss.

“From dad,” my brother adds, setting down a paper bag on the tabletop between Katniss and me before following Prim out the door.

Katniss and I stare at it, both our noses active. Then her eyes cut to mine at the same time mine cut to hers, and in an instant we’re both on our feet, stomachs chorusing, as we fish out four rolls, some cold ham, and a half dozen eggs.

“I love your dad.”

__________________

The carrots are gone when I go check on them around lunch time.

Whoever took them, or ate them, they left the jar behind on the porch boards next to the door jamb where I’d set it, at least. 

I bring it in and raise it so Katniss can see.

She just shrugs and gives me a sad smile. “Someone needed it more than us, I guess. Welcome to the Seam, remember?” 

Maybe, for the first time since I went with Katniss to deliver the coffee can of money for that family to buy medicine, it’s really starting to sink in what life is like for the miners and their families.

I mean, I knew. 

But I’m not sure I fully  _ understood. _ Being so grateful for the bag my brother brought this morning though, maybe my body was figuring it out before my brain. 

__________________

My dad shows up with Prim about half an hour after the bakery’s closing time.  He bares a box with some groceries, but he doesn’t talk much while Prim redoes Katniss’ hand. It’s hurting her again, and I think all of us feel a little sick about it. But when Prim’s done, his mood doesn’t lighten.

“Peeta, I need to speak to Katniss alone for a bit. How about you take Prim for a short walk.” 

“Huh?” I give Katniss a look, hesitant to leave her alone with him without it being her idea. 

“You and Prim go for a walk,” he repeats. It’s an order, said softly, but still an order. “Twenty minutes should do.”

I look from him to Katniss again, silently asking if she’s okay with it.

Her eyes flit away from mine briefly to stare into space, which tells me she’s reluctant, but then she gives a nod and a weak smile, so I go.

“What is that about?” I ask Prim once we’re outside, door closed behind us, hoping he’s said something to her.

“I have no idea. He just said he was coming with me instead of your brother.” 

 

I notice she looks as tired and pale as she did in the morning. I let her choose our direction and we take off at a very slow walk. The miners are off shift now, and so she leads us into the intermittent foot traffic of men coming home from work, all eager to get home to their tables and their families. In contrast to us, they walk fast and we’re occasionally passed.

“Your mom is talking a little better today.” I’m glad she’s the one mentioning it. “She’s still slurring badly, and she misses words, but at least it’s not just grunts and scrambles anymore. She was able to sit up this afternoon and drink plenty of broth.”

“That’s… good.”  My cheeks flare with heat, because it gives me mixed emotions.

We walk on a bit more, me still not knowing what to say about it.

“I still can’t believe Katniss pulled a knife on her,” she whispers.

My hand catches on her forearm, and I shake my head.

“Don’t, Prim. Don’t ever mention it anywhere, not even—” I look behind us and a miner is a few dozen paces away, drawing nearer. “Not even if you’re sure no one can overhear, okay?”

She looks hurt, like I’m calling her a child after everything she’s done for my family. After everything she’s had to go through about the Finnegan kid.   Her eyes dig into mine until I feel ashamed.

I release her arm with an apologetic, “Sorry.”

We walk again.  The man passes us easily.

“Well, at least now you  _ have  _ to see how much she likes you.”

I glance sideways.

“Maybe.”

“No ‘maybe.’” She sounds like she’s losing patience with me about this. “You  _ know _ that’s why she chased you out, Peeta. She was trying to get you as far away from any connection that me or mom had to the Finnegans.”

My paranoia makes me look over my shoulder again. More miners are making their way down the road, but they’re still a few hundred feet off. 

And now, well, now is the time to have that talk with her. 

I slow our pace up until the miners pass us and the street is clear for at least a little ways. 

“Prim…” I start slowly, aware that I’m about to do exactly the thing I just told her not to do—talk in the open. “If things go sideways about… where it comes to that family…” I stop walking, look around at the houses to make sure there’s no windows, no people looking out at us, and make sure she’s looking me square in the face before I finish. “You had no idea, do you understand? For the time before I started tutoring him, you knew him _only_ as another student you occasionally spoke to around shared class times. You weren’t friends- _ever-_ before I started tutoring him. Last semester, you were friendly because that’s just how you are with your classmates, but you never made real friends with him because you were worried he ‘liked-you’ liked you, and you didn’t like him back. That’s going to explain why he was so clingy last semester with you, and also his blow-up at lunch that time when I made him sit with you and Katniss. 

 

“He’s going to give the same story as that if he’s asked about your relationship from last semester, so you need to stick to it.  _ He’s not going to put you in any more danger than his family already has. _ If they ask him about you, he’s going to tell them he doesn’t remember you ever coming to his house with your mom, and if you did, he must’ve been too sick to know it. He’s going to make it clear you didn’t seem to recognize him once he was back in school after that off year, but that you  _ were _ nice and he knew you were the daughter of the woman who had helped him and he was desperate to try and make a friend so he wasn’t alone and could have someone to ask for help with his failing grades. 

 

“I need you to remember it that he only finally came into your circle as a real, sort-of friend after I started tutoring him, and that never _once_ was anything said or done by anyone that made you suspect he wasn’t Jeremy Finnegan, do you understand?”

She almost looks like she wants to disagree.

 

“ _ But what about you? _ ” Unshed tears well up in her eyes.  

“I’m not  _ hoping  _ to fall on the sword here, Prim. I’m more than willing to, if it comes to it to protect you and Katniss. And if it does come to it,  _ you’re both going to let me _ . No argument. But I meant what I tried to tell Katniss; I have a story that makes sense from my end, and so I need you both to trust me. All this may not even be necessary, if his parents really do have a plan. But I can’t afford to approach them to ask, and I can’t just assume their plan is a good one, so we have to all be on the same page. I need you to be as surprised as anyone, if he gets called out. Be scared. Be shocked. Be angry. Cry. Whatever. Because that would be normal. Don’t let on that any of us knew. To you, right now he’s just a broody friend who talks too little, doesn’t hang out much, and you only begrudgingly know because your guardian started tutoring him.”

She nods, finally, and she swipes with her sleeves to get rid of the tears that are now racing down her face. If she was pale before, she’s ashen now, and she’s on the edge of hyperventilating, so I turn her and start us walking again, rubbing my hand on her upper back to help calm her as we go.

“When— If—  someone asks you how I came to tutor him, tell them you’re not sure, but you think it has something to do with wrestling.”

“But that doesn’t even make sense,” she squeezes out between emotional breaths, but at least she’s is starting to get her cry under control; she’s trying to keep her head and think. “Neither of them wrestled.”

“That’s totally fine. That’s perfect, even. I need it to be a fact that was so trivial to me it never even got discussed over the dinner table. And the more you’re not clear on the who and what’s, the more slack I’ll have to play it like I’ll need to.”

 

“Peeta,” she steps closer and grips my forearm painfully as we walk. She says, very hushed, “You’re talking like you already know something bad’s going to happen. What do you know?”

 

“Prim…” I bring my over hand over and rest it over hers. “I don’t know that anything bad is going to happen. I’m just trying to be prepared, okay?”

She doesn’t respond.  I see another tear drip down her face, but at least she’s not in a full cry again.

“Okay?” I ask again, forcing my tone to mimic a level of reassurance I don’t actually feel at the moment. 

 

“Okay,” she finally mumbles back, wiping at her face again.

 

“Thank you,” I tell her, meaning it.

We go on to the end of the lane, to the edge of the Seam it feels like, where nothing much but dirt and trees stretch away in the distance before it hits electrified fence. Evening breeze makes a nice song through the canopy, and feels cool and refreshing against my skin. By the time we’re on our way back, the street is empty now as it stretches away from us, and Prim looks like she’s coping.

“How was school today?” I ask. 

She shrugs. “Okay, I guess. Jeremy...” She looks at me to see if I’m going to have a reaction to her mentioning him.

“Go ahead.”

“He wouldn’t talk to me again today, just like Friday, except to tell me to leave him alone.” She sniffs loudly. “And he’s kind of mean about the way he says it, too. I guess I know why now, though.”

“It’s hard on him. And he’s trying to protect you.”

She doesn’t look up, but nods.

“Do him a favor?”

“What?” she asks.

“Let him protect you. If he’s tried to come off as a jerk who doesn’t want to talk to you, treat him the same way right back, like you’re confused why he’s acting that way and that you’ll have nothing to do with him until he apologizes.  You know,” I shoulder bump with her to try and lighten things a big, “like it’s freshmen year of high school and all you have to worry about is drama with boys.”

She frowns, so I shoulder bump her again.

“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbles, but a little smile tugs at her lips.  “I really don’t like him like that, though.”

God bless her.

It’s definitely high school.

We finish the trip back easier than we went out. Prim seems to feel better as we go, and loosens up enough to talk about her classes, homework that’s waiting for her back at my house, and the things she helped out with around the bakery after school.

Dad apparently even let her be out front and ring orders up for a bit. She brightens up as she talks about it.

She even tosses in a, “So, your brother’s pretty nice,” right as she’s about to open the front door. Maybe I’m taking the guardian thing too seriously, because I swear I have a heart attack at the slight teasing tone I think might be there.

But instead of following up, I bump into Prim as she stops dead-still in the doorway.

Over her shoulder, I see my dad sitting on one of the table chairs, with Katniss curled into him on his lap and sobbing uncontrollably.

 


End file.
